NASA intends to take an unprecedented 3D observation of the sun this month. In doing so, the agency hopes to understand why its outer atmosphere — the corona — is hotter than its surface, how does the solar wind work, and how the corona transforms into solar wind. As a bonus, the mission will take 3D pictures of a solar eclipse, from space.
Learning More About the Sun’s Surface
The system that will make these things possible is made up of four small satellites that will work together to create 3D pictures of the area closest to the sun’s surface. The system, called PUNCH, (for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), will cover a massive amount of space called the heliosphere, the region of the space influenced by the Sun.
“Our heliosphere is this massive, gigantic object that spans so far out from the sun, and PUNCH is going to connect from the closest end of the sun to the farthest out,” Joe Westlake, the director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division at the agency’s headquarters, told reporters during a virtual press conference.
Read More: The Dazzling Sun of 2024
Four Satellites Working Together
PUNCH will ride a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket, enter low-Earth orbit, and work with NASA’s agency’s SPHEREx observatory, which the agency describes as a wide-angle version of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Instrumentation from the combination of the four PUNCH satellites will combine views from both the strongest and weakest of rays of the sun and will avoid Earth blocking out any views by combining data from the four far-flung satellites.
This more complete picture of the heliosphere should improve space weather forecasting. Since instruments will always be trained on the sun, catching solar storms should be much easier.
The imagery PUNCH creates from data collected from its four satellites should also be much sharper than other shots of the sun. It is the first mission designed to make use of the polarization of light to measure the corona and solar wind in 3D, much the way polarizing sunglasses align the light particles for clearer vision.
The polarization system, extremely sensitive cameras and an extra-wide angle view will provide greater detail of the sun, its corona, and the winds that flow out from it.
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
