NASA Invites Media to Discuss PUNCH Mission to Study Solar Wind

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 4, to share information about the agency's upcoming PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which is targeted to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.

The agency's PUNCH mission is a constellation of four small satellites. When they arrive in low Earth orbit, the satellites will make global, 3D observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, and help NASA learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind. By imaging the Sun's corona and the solar wind together, scientists hope to better understand the entire inner heliosphere – Sun, solar wind, and Earth – as a single connected system.

Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency's website at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

Participants include:

• Madhulika Guhathakurta, NASA program scientist, NASA Headquarters
• Nicholeen Viall, PUNCH mission scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
• Craig DeForest, PUNCH principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute

To participate in the media teleconference, media must RSVP no later than 12 p.m. on Feb. 4 to: Abbey Interrante at: [email protected]. NASA's media accreditation policy is available online. 

The PUNCH mission will share a ride to space with NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) space telescope on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 

The Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, leads the PUNCH mission. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 

To learn more about PUNCH, please visit:  

https://nasa.gov/punch/

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SOURCE NASA