Artist’s concept of the PUNCH satellites in orbit. Credit: NASA
NASA’s PUNCH mission has officially come online, promising to transform our understanding of space weather.
By capturing global, 3D views of the Sun’s corona, PUNCH will reveal how solar wind and explosive solar events evolve and impact our planet. These disturbances can cause stunning auroras but also disrupt satellites and power grids.
PUNCH Mission Successfully Activated
NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission is officially online. Mission controllers have confirmed that all four small satellites are fully operational and running at full power.
Over the next two years, PUNCH will capture global, 3D images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona, and study how it transforms into the solar wind—a constant stream of charged particles flowing through space.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying NASA’s SPHEREx observatory and PUNCH satellites, launches from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. SPHEREx will use its telescope to provide an all-sky spectral survey, creating a 3D map of the entire sky to help scientists investigate the origins of our universe. PUNCH will study origins of the Sun’s outflow of material, or the solar wind, capturing continuous 3D images of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind’s journey into the solar system. Credit: NASA/Jim Ross
Why Space Weather Matters
The solar wind, along with powerful solar events like solar flares and coronal mass ejections, can trigger space weather effects across the solar system. These disturbances can intensify auroras, disrupt satellites, and even cause power grid failures on Earth.
By tracking these solar phenomena, PUNCH will give scientists new insights into how they form and evolve. This research could improve predictions of space weather events, helping to protect Earth’s technology and robotic spacecraft navigating the solar system.
A Virtual Telescope in Space
All four spacecraft are synchronized to serve as a single “virtual instrument” that spans the whole PUNCH constellation. The PUNCH mission will downlink data multiple times a day via ground-based antennas on Earth that are managed by the Swedish Space Corporation. Then, the data will be sent to the mission operations center at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) offices in Boulder, Colorado, which will share it with the science operations center, also at SwRI.
The data will be available to the public at the same time it is available to the science team. All PUNCH data will be published through the Solar Data Analysis Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, ensuring open access to the scientific community and public.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, leads NASA’s PUNCH mission and oversees the operation of its four spacecraft from Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by NASA’s Explorers Program Office at Goddard Space Flight Center, under the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
