NASA’s Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, spacecraft is set to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, no earlier than Feb. 28, 2025. Designed and built by Southwest Research Institute, PUNCH’s four suitcase-sized satellites will spread out in low Earth orbit to produce around-the-clock images of the Sun’s corona as it transitions into the solar wind. Led by SwRI’s Dr. Craig DeForest, the mission is designed to provide a unified, integrated image of the solar corona and the nascent solar wind for the first time.

To make the invisible visible, PUNCH will carry specialized instruments including a coronagraph, the Narrow Field Imager developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and three SwRI-developed Wide Field Imagers that will capture the faint outermost portion of the solar corona and the solar wind. Credits: SwRI/ NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ USSF 30th Space Wing/Alex Valdez