SPACE reports, “On Feb. 27, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA plans to launch the sun-studying PUNCH mission to low Earth orbit. It will ride alongside the agency’s SPHEREx observatory, which is sort of like a wide-angle version of the James Webb Space Telescope, as part of the agency’s Launch Services Program that works to make space missions more cost efficient.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Tag: PUNCH
SpaceX Launches NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions
The New York Times reports, “Two NASA missions launched from the California coast and soared toward the stars late Tuesday night, overcoming a week of delays to get to orbit. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home. The rocket’s chief passenger is SPHEREx, a space telescope that will take images of the entire sky in more than a hundred colors that are invisible to the human eye. Accompanying the telescope is a suite of satellites known collectively as PUNCH, which will study the sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind.”
Full Story (New York Times – Subscription Publication)
Video
SpaceX launches NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions (Launch at 58:01 mark)
(NASA; YouTube)
NASA to Launch Dual Missions on SpaceX Falcon 9 from California This Weekend
SPACE reports, “Sunday (March 2) is shaping up to be a delightful day for space explorers, as not one but two major NASA missions are expected to take to the skies — and interestingly, though the spacecraft associated with these missions are pretty different from one another, you might say they all have the same profession: cosmic cartography. Cartographer one, named PUNCH, will map the sun’s dynamics, while cartographer two, named SPHEREx, will kind of map the rest of the universe.”
Full Story (SPACE)