
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to better understand how the mass and energy there become the solar wind that fills the solar system. Imaging the Sun’s corona and the solar wind together will help scientists better understand the entire inner heliosphere—the Sun, solar wind, and Earth—as a single connected system. Solar wind and energetic solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections can create space weather effects throughout the solar system. These phenomena can significantly impact human society and technology, sparking and intensifying auroras, interfering with satellites, and triggering power outages. The measurements from PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how these potentially disruptive events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and the impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space. The launch of PUNCH and the SPHEREx mission is scheduled for no earlier than 27 February 2025 from Vandenberg SFB. Simon Steel, Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center, and MUSE Outreach Lead Rebecca Robinson will attend the launch and return to the SETI Institute for a chat about the mission, its scientific goals, and its relevance to understanding life on Earth. (Recorded live 6 March 2025. PUNCH launched on 11 March.)
4.3
44 ratings
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to better understand how the mass and energy there become the solar wind that fills the solar system. Imaging the Sun’s corona and the solar wind together will help scientists better understand the entire inner heliosphere—the Sun, solar wind, and Earth—as a single connected system. Solar wind and energetic solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections can create space weather effects throughout the solar system. These phenomena can significantly impact human society and technology, sparking and intensifying auroras, interfering with satellites, and triggering power outages. The measurements from PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how these potentially disruptive events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and the impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space. The launch of PUNCH and the SPHEREx mission is scheduled for no earlier than 27 February 2025 from Vandenberg SFB. Simon Steel, Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center, and MUSE Outreach Lead Rebecca Robinson will attend the launch and return to the SETI Institute for a chat about the mission, its scientific goals, and its relevance to understanding life on Earth. (Recorded live 6 March 2025. PUNCH launched on 11 March.)
943 Listeners
1,348 Listeners
2,869 Listeners
342 Listeners
13,994 Listeners
538 Listeners
803 Listeners
227 Listeners
314 Listeners
1,227 Listeners
2,273 Listeners
284 Listeners
2,103 Listeners
128 Listeners
51 Listeners