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PUNCH mission

@punch-mission.bsky.social
217 followers 160 following 49 posts

Four spacecraft, one instrument … imaging almost nothing at all. PUNCH is a polarizing wide-field imager, distributed across four orbiting spacecraft, to track space weather (and solar wind) across the heliosphere. (Non-NASA account for the mission team).

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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
A Year of the Solar Corona, from PUNCH/NFI We just released a full year of PUNCH/NFI data, showing how the #corona evolved during the first 12 months of PUNCH #science operations! ☀️🔭🛰️🧪🚀 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
A background-subtracted image of the solar corona, from PUNCH/NFI, demonstrates photometric background subtraction.  It is part of a movie containing a full year of PUNCH/NFI observations, available at YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqNTKkoeRCo).
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
We watched a bright comet's tail break up in the ubiquitous solar wind, turning into vortices like the whirlpools left by an oar stroked through water. But 10x larger than Earth! ☀️🧪🛰️🔭🚀 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
Three panels show the evolution of Comet Pan-STARRS as its tail broke into vortices in April 2026.  WhiteWind blog entry here: https://whtwnd.com/punch-mission.bsky.social/3mp65zavgne2f
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Visualizing the Artemis-Mission CMEs with PUNCH | PUNCH mission | WhiteWind blog How can you visualize/display a CME when you need to see both the lower corona and a huge 90° wide swath of the inner solar system? Nonlinear stretching! ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
Visualizing the Artemis-Mission CMEs with PUNCH
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Girl Scouts earn the PUNCH Ancient & Modern Sunwatching Patch! We are working with the #girlscouts to teach kids about #heliophysics and the amazing world around us. A few will become scientists, and all will carry their knowledge into society. ☀️🧪🛰️🔭 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
A group of girl scouts in Maryland learn about heliophysics at the first PUNCH Ancient and Modern Sunwatching patch event, in early May 2026
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
We're doing quantitative analysis now, tracking CME fronts across the solar system. A tried-and-true way to do that is by generating "height-time maps" (also called "J-maps") that show at a glance how each event moves. Here's a blog post describing how we do that. ☀️🧪🛰️🔭 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
WhiteWind blog headline announces "PUNCH Tracks CMEs with Height-Time Map".
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
A Celestial Staring Contest (across 1 AU) PUNCH observes Parker Solar Probe continuously. But Parker Solar Probe also observes PUNCH from time to time! Click the WhiteWind blog link for a nice visual of this celestial "staring contest" between the two missions. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
Two missions (PUNCH and PSP) stare at each other across 1 A.U. of space in this montage of data from the two separate spacecraft.  Left shows the 90° PUNCH field of view, with constellations overlain, and the location of Parker Solar Probe in the image.  Right shows the narrower PSP/WISPR field of view, with Earth (and PUNCH) in it, as PSP whips around the Sun after a perihelion pass.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
PUNCH images are now making tomographic models of the solar wind – like a CAT scan of the entire inner solar system! ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
Several plots show how images of the tenuous solar wind, taken by the PUNCH mission, are being used to generate tomographic (3-D) models of the entire inner solar system.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
The upper (or outer) limit of the solar corona is the "Alfvén surface. One of our objectives is to map the surface on the daily. Our big-sister mission Parker Solar Probe flies through that region. Some of our Co-I's have been modeling its evolution across years. 🧪☀️🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
A header advertised a WhiteWind blog entry, and a figure shows maps of the Sun's changing "Alfvén surface", the notional surface marking the outer (or upper) edge of the solar corona.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Aww, thanks @craig.deforest.org. We're still going strong! Watch for some very cool comet results and new data products in the next few weeks!
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Even spacecraft experience the astronomical seasons just like we do here on Earth! Here's a plot showing how the PUNCH spacecrafts' batteries saw increasing use during our roughly-75-day "eclipse season" near the winter solstice. ☀️🛰️🧪🔭 Full writeup here: whtwnd.com/punch-missio...
A plot of spacecraft battery charge level over 2.5 months, for each of the four PUNCH spacecraft, reveals battery usage while the spacecraft flew through Earth's shadow in late 2025. (https://whtwnd.com/did:plc:dd6rbxnc4ostg26plpmonhcz/3mewyevrmrg2v)
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
It's been six months since our "first light" release of science data, and also since the PUNCH Outreach Project observed the (June 3) "Double Diamond" at the iconic Chaco Canyon "curly zia" petroglyph (which appears to be among the oldest human renderings of the solar corona). ☀️🔭🛰️
whtwnd.com
Celebrating "First Light" for PUNCH and PUNCH Outreach | PUNCH mission
image June 3rd, 2025: Sunrise over Triangle Rock in Chaco Canyon AND the "first light" release image for PUNCH The PUNCH Outreach team has contributed to cultural astronomy research in Chaco Canyon, ...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Two great tastes that taste great together! ☀️🧪🔭
nso.edu
Two Eyes on the Sun: Unveiling Solar Dynamics with Coordinated Observations - NSO - National Solar Observatory
In October 2022, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope and the European Space Agency (ESA) Solar Orbiter carried out their first coordinated campaign, capturing a...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Polarization Fireworks | PUNCH mission | WhiteWind blog PUNCH science nugget #24: some cool "fireworks" in our polarized images! #solarcorona ☀️🛰️🔭🧪
whtwnd.com
Polarization Fireworks | PUNCH mission
A colorful image of the solar corona, starfield, and dust shows colorful streaks from the polarized corona and moving dust motes near the PUNCH spacecraft A debris impact on WFI-2, together with the p...
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Reposted by PUNCH mission
Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 03/12/2025
PUNCH @punch-mission.bsky.social found out we are good at comet tracking, even as we calibrate/refine our solar wind imaging pipeline. In the last 3 months, we've tracked 3 notable comets with images every 4 min, around the clock: SWAN, Atlas, and Lemmon. PUNCH data are free to get and use. ☀️🛰️🧪🔭
science.nasa.gov
NASA's PUNCH Tracks Comet Discovered by SOHO Spacecraft - NASA Science
From August to October, NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission tracked comet 2025 R2 (SWAN) — one of the thousands of comets
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
We just rolled out v0h of the PUNCH data pipeline. Most of Aug and Sep are now up. By Sunday we should have reprocessed it all. The L2 data include 4-min-cadence images of 3I/Atlas for those who wish to verify it is not an alien spaceship doing maneuvers. 🧪🚀🛰️🔭☀️ punch.space.swri.edu/punch_scienc...
https://punch.space.swri.edu/punch_science_getdata.php
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
We continue to refine our data products. The servers are right now reprocessing images for our version 0h data, which will turn up in data repositories over the next few days. Here's a short nugget on how we're working toward routine 0.1% photometric precision. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ (whtwnd.com/punch-missio...)
WhiteWind blog banner: "The Journey to 0.1% Photometric Calibration".  Link: https://whtwnd.com/punch-mission.bsky.social/3m4eeeelx5h2v
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Learn by doing! Come manipulate PUNCH data at our online science meeting this Thursday! ☀️🛰️ Deets at the PUNCH website (punch.space.swri.edu).
Screen snap of the PUNCH website news carousel shows a pumpkin carved into the shape of the PUNCH field of view, with eyeholes and a jagged mouth to make a spooky face!  It is advertising an online science meeting on October 30.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
New nugget from PUNCH today: sometimes, adding noise to data makes the data better. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️
whtwnd.com
The Importance of [photon] Noise | PUNCH mission
Plots showing the effect of noise on PUNCH data PUNCH models of background light in the instruments were developing “stairstepping” errors (blue trace at left); this is resolved by adding artificial n...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
It's been a while, but not because we're idle! We've got lots going on "behind the scenes" at #PUNCH. Here's our latest -- this comet has only been known for a week, but we've been imaging it since mid August! 🧪🛰️🔭☀️
whtwnd.com
PUNCH Tracks A New Comet: C/2025 R2 (SWAN) | PUNCH mission
image \*PUNCH detected comet SWAN for weeks before its discovery last week (11-Sep-2025). Tracking the comet is a warmup for tracking the upcoming 3I interstellar comet, which will enter the PUNCH FO...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Looks like we'll be able to help forecast radiation storms in interplanetary space! #spaceweather 🛰️🧪☀️
whtwnd.com
Forecasting Energetic Particles in the Inner Heliosphere | PUNCH mission
image By tracking the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) speed relative to the surrounding background, PUNCH can now forecast radiation levels from space weather events known as Energetic Storm Particle (ES...
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Reposted by PUNCH mission
Eliud Bonilla @eliudbonilla.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Super proud of being part of this mission. Go Parker! www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1dT... #astronomy #heliophysics
youtube.com
The Closest Images Ever Taken of the Sun’s Atmosphere
YouTube video by NASA Goddard
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
It's an exciting time as we ramp up the data reduction pipeline. Here's the first of several items about the legwork we've done as the science team prepares to execute our science! 🧪☀️
whtwnd.com
The Sun's Alfvén Surface | PUNCH mission
The Alfvén surface – the outer boundary of the Sun's corona – is very complex. This visualization of the Sun's Alfvén surface, with regions below the surface shown using a total eclipse image from ast...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
We're starting to view space weather events! 🛰️☀️https://whtwnd.com/punch-mission.bsky.social/3lrgewlzwae2l
whtwnd.com
NFI Sees a CME | PUNCH mission
The PUNCH/NFI coronagraph revealed beautiful, detailed structure in a CME departing the Sun on 6/3/2025. Preliminary images like this one demonstrate that the instrument is working well and the Scienc...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
So cool...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Every bit downlinked from space costs money. PUNCH saved a whole heck of a lot of that, by just not downlinking information about the photon noise field. ☀️🛰️🔭🧪🚀
whtwnd.com
Don't downlink quantum noise! | PUNCH mission
A plot of noise levels in PUNCH data shows the effect of photon-counting (quantum) noise PUNCH uses square-root coding to eliminate unwanted quantum “photon noise” from the data. Raw camera pixels are...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
We're now publishing all our celestial images from space as they become available at the PUNCH SOC -- up to about 700 images per day per spacecraft! "Level 0" (straight-from-camera) at the moment; Level 1 (photometric) in just a couple of weeks. ☀️🛰️🔭🧪
whtwnd.com
PUNCH data are live online! | PUNCH mission
Screen snap of the PUNCH data access pagePUNCH data are now available via NASA's Solar Data Analysis Center, or via the PUNCH website at https://punch.space.swri.edu. PUNCH images of space are now av...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
#heliophysics
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
We made the cover of Technology Today, SwRI's quarterly news magazine! Here's a very approachable article describing what we're all about. ☀️🔭🛰️🧪
swri.org
PUNCH Makes the Invisible Visible | Southwest Research Institute
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
When does a new Moon look like a full Moon? When we see it by Earthlight against the backdrop of the solar corona! ☀️🛰️🔭🧪
whtwnd.com
NFI sees the new Moon | PUNCH mission
NFI Level 0 image, 2025-04-27 11:28:21 UTC During commissioning, the PUNCH NFI instrument captured this image on 4/27/2025: the new Moon, roughly 3.5° from the Sun itself in the sky. The Moon is illu...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
WFI-1 caught the "smiley face" before it turned "smiley", in a rare quaduple conjunction of the Moon, Venus, Saturn ... and Neptune! Plus a side dish of Mercury. 🛰️🔭☀️🧪🚀
whtwnd.com
WFI-1 sees four planets and a crescent moon | PUNCH mission
WFI-1 Level-0 Image During commissioning, the PUNCH WFI-1 spacecraft captured this image of the quadruple conjunction of Moon, Venus, Saturn, and Neptune, with Mercury nearby. There've been lots of s...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Solar and heliospheric data, like astronomical #photography, often carry ethereal beauty. Here is the zodiacal light (the dust cloud around our star), with linear #polarization rendered as color, in front of the unpolarized stars of #constellation #taurus and the #pleiades. Lots more to come. ☀️🔭🧪🛰️
whtwnd.com
A Polarimetric Rainbow | PUNCH mission
A polarimetric image set collected by PUNCH/WFI-2 on 18-April-2025 shows the zodiacal light as an ethereal rainbow in front of the familiar constellations of Taurus (including the Pleiades) and Triang...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Here's a short article on why it's necessary to wait for good things – especially the polarimetric data products we'll be exporting after we finish commissioning (and in-flight calibration). ☀️🛰️🔭
whtwnd.com
Why PUNCH commissioning takes months (it's planned) | PUNCH mission
As we continue commissioning the PUNCH Observatories, we're knocking off action items day by day and also bringing in the first scientific data sets. During this time we're all impatient to see the a...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Yep, that's us. 🛰️🔭
gizmodo.com
A Mission to Take Sick Images of the Sun Got Its First Test Shots Back
The first images from a nascent NASA mission showcased the spacecraft's ability to take deep-field images of the night sky.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
We released our first light images! Here's a nugget entry about it, with links to the official mission blog and two press releases. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️🚀
whtwnd.com
PUNCH Collects Spectacular First Light | PUNCH mission
first-light montage from PUNCH This first-light mosaic from PUNCH shows how the NFI and WFI fields of view fit together. Celestial objects are visible down to 9th magnitude (asteroid Iris) in the raw...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Even before the instrument doors open, we can make useful measurements of the instruments themselves and the radiation environment. We're planning to open all four instrument doors this week and see the stars! 🧪🔭🛰️☀️🚀
whtwnd.com
PUNCH Images The Door: Even Dark Frames Are Useful | PUNCH mission
\*Two dark frames collected from WFI-1 on 2025-04-10 show a few important effects in the darkest 3% of the dynamic range: low detector read noise, dual-readout digitizer offsets, very faint glint comi...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
We expect to open our first two instrument doors on Monday. That's a big deal both scientifically, and for the engineers who poured an incredible amount of effort into making sure it goes well. Wish us luck! 🛰️☀️🚀
whtwnd.com
Why opening doors in space is a big deal | PUNCH mission
This week we're planning on opening doors on two of our four single-instrument spacecraft: the Narrow Field Imager (NFI) and one of the three Wide Field Imagers (WFIs). That's a big deal scientifica...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
First starfield images are just a few days away! 🛰️🔭☀️🚀
whtwnd.com
X-band radios... check! Ready for first light next week! | PUNCH mission
Today we tested our X-band radios and they are working fine. That is a huge relief. We have two separate radios on each of four spacecraft: an S-band transmitter (2-4 GHz, roughly the same band as a...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
If all goes well, we plan to open at least one (and maybe two) instrument doors next Monday, 14-April.
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Rocket fuel tends to be explosive and dangerous, so we never keep more than about a gram of it on hand – our four spacecraft make it on-board from water and electricity, then burn it in shot-glass-sized rocket engines. ☀️🛰️
whtwnd.com
Three Swift Kicks: PUNCH fires a novel thruster on-orbit | PUNCH mission
PUNCH successfully fires a new kind of rocket engine Between 2025 April 2 and 2025 April 3, the WFI-2 spacecraft successfully "hot-fired" its onboard Hydros rocket engine three times in a row, unatten...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Last week we "saw" the solar eclipse too! Even though our instrument doors are still closed for commissioning. ☀️🛰️🔭
whtwnd.com
PUNCH "Sees" a Solar Eclipse | PUNCH mission
plot of main-bus voltage from two WFI spacecraft shows a slight dip as each craft passes through the 2025 march 29 solar eclipse On March 29 2025, Earth passed through the Moon’s shadow. So did PUNCH...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
PUNCH Nugget #4 - our friend @chrisoutofspace.bsky.social prepared a nice time-variable map showing all the different missions that will be flying through our field of view over the next couple of years. Nice to see a few of the probes Humanity is operating in deep space right now. ☀️🛰️🔭
whtwnd.com
PUNCH's Orbital Friends | PUNCH mission
PUNCH will jointly observe the Sun with many other missions. Trajectories of the Solar Orbiter, Parker Solar Probe, BepiColombo, STEREO-A and JUICE and the 4 inner planets, spanning April 2025 through December 2029, show collaborative opportunities with PUNCH. There's also an animation (link to...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
When considering a space mission, almost everyone thinks of the spacecraft. But getting data from the instrument to your laptop computer is a very long chain. We just demonstrated ours, end-to-end. In two weeks, we'll use the same pipeline to deliver pictures of the cosmos! ☀️🛰️🚀
whtwnd.com
PUNCH SOC processes its first "image" from space | PUNCH mission
Data from PUNCH/NFI successfully processed into an image with metadata The PUNCH SOC correctly associated pointing metadata (left) with test-pattern images (right) downlinked from space by the PUNCH ...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
This is the official PUNCH mission account. We're using the WhiteWind blogging platform to generate periodic updates that are longer than a skeet. Here's our first one. 🛰️☀️
whtwnd.com
PUNCH LEOPS is complete; commissioning continues |
PUNCH LEOPS is complete. commissioning continues.  |  |--------|--------| PUNCH deployment images show two of the spacecraft just after separation from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, 11-Mar-...
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PUNCH mission @punch-mission.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Hello, world! This is the mission account for the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (#PUNCH) mission. Follow for announcements, milestones, and science. We launched just a few days ago, but data will be flowing before you know it. First light is about three weeks from today. ☀️🛰️
punch.space.swri.edu
PUNCH: Home
Website for PUNCH, the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere
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