Space & Cosmos

Punch spacecraft makes final pit stop before launch

The SwRI-led PUNCH spacecraft has arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in preparation for launch, targeted for the end of February. This image shows the four PUNCH satellites spread out around the Earth along the day/night line, creating a complete picture of the corona and solar wind. Three of the PUNCH satellites will carry wide-field imagers developed by SwRI, and one will carry a narrow-field imager. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Four suitcase-sized spacecraft designed and built by Southwest Research Institute made their final Earthside pit stop at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission shares a vehicle into space with the Spectrophotometer for the History, Reionization Era, and Ice Explorer (SPHEREx) of the Universe.

“The PUNCH mission will integrate our understanding of the sun’s corona, the external atmosphere visible during a total solar eclipse, and the ‘solar wind’ that fills and defines the solar system,” said PUNCH principal investigator SwRI Solar System Science. said Dr. Craig DeForest. and the exploration department. “Once this constellation unfolds, we will be able to see and understand the very solar wind that flows from the star and blows toward Earth on a daily basis.”

The Punch satellite constellation is targeted to be launched into a polar orbit along the day/night line in late February 2025, so the spacecraft will remain in sunlight and have clear visibility in all directions.

The three satellites will carry a Wide Field Imager (WFI) developed by SwRI. It is a heliosphere imager that provides a field of view ranging from 18 to 180 solar radii, or 45 degrees, from the Sun in the sky. WFI uses an artificial “horizon” and deep baffles to observe the very faint outermost parts of the solar corona and the solar wind itself.

“This device can reduce direct sunlight by more than 16 orders of magnitude, or a factor of 10 million billion, which is the ratio of the mass of a human being to the mass of a cold virus,” DeForest said. “The wide-field achromatic optics are based on the famous Nagler eyepiece design used in ground-based telescopes.”

One satellite carries a coronagraph, a narrow-field imager developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory that continuously images the sun’s corona.

SwRI-led PUNCH spacecraft makes final pit stop before launch

Four small, suitcase-sized spacecraft designed and built by Southwest Research Institute have arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, their last Earth-side pit stop before launching into polar orbit. The PUNCH satellite is sharing a space vehicle with NASA’s SPHEREx mission, with launch scheduled for the end of February. Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Alex Valdez

All four spacecraft will work in sync to act as a single “virtual instrument” that captures about a quarter of the sky centered on the Sun. Each spacecraft also carries a camera developed by RAL Space that collects three raw images every four minutes through three different polarization filters. In addition, each spacecraft will generate clear, unpolarized images every eight minutes for calibration purposes.

“When electron particles scatter sunlight, they align the light waves in a particular direction, which is polarization,” DeForest said. “By measuring light using polarized filters similar to polarized sunglasses, PUNCH scientists can create a 3D map of features found throughout the corona and the interior of our solar system.”

This new perspective will allow scientists to identify the exact trajectory and velocity of a coronal mass ejection as it moves through the interior of the solar system, improving current instruments that only measure the corona itself but not its movement in three dimensions. You will be able to do it.

“The PUNCH team has successfully overcome many modern challenges over the past few months to complete the integration and environmental testing of the four observatories and has proven to be incredibly resilient,” PUNCH Project Manager Ronnie Killough said. “We look forward to a successful launch.”

Provided by Southwest Research Institute

Source: PUNCH spacecraft makes final pit stop before launch (January 22, 2025) From https://phys.org/news/2025-01-spacecraft-pit.html on January 23, 2025 acquisition

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