In March 2025, NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission launched into orbit to monitor the Sun's outer atmosphere to reveal more about solar wind. Developed and led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), this constellation consists of four microsatellites that observe the Sun's corona and heliosphere using continuous 3D deep-field imaging. While completing its commission phase, the Wide Field Imagers (WFIs) aboard the four PUNCH spacecraft captured high-resolution images of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) in greater detail than any previous mission.
SwRI heliophysicist Dr. Craig DeForest discussed the latest accomplishments of the PUNCH mission at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting, which took place from June 8th to 12th in Anchorage, Alaska. DeForest is the Director of the SwRI's Department of Solar and Heliospheric Physics, the former Chair of the AAS's Solar Physics Division, and PUNCH's principal investigator. As he explained:
These preliminary movies show that PUNCH can actually track space weather across the solar system and view the corona and solar wind as a single system. This big-picture view is essential to helping scientists better understand and predict space weather driven by CMEs, which can disrupt communications, endanger satellites and create auroras at Earth. These first integrated images of our home in space are astonishing, but the best is yet to come. Once the spacecraft are in their final formation and the ground processing is fully sighted over the next few months, we'll be able to track the solar wind and space weather in 3D throughout our neighborhood in space.
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These images were taken by PUNCH's four cameras, which work together as a single "virtual instrument," measuring 12,875 km (8,000 mi) across. Their WFIs work with a Narrow Field Imager (NFI) chronograph that blocks out the Sun's bright light, allowing scientists to observe the outermost portion of the corona and the continual stream of charged particles from the Sun (solar wind). The images the spacecraft took were stitched together to create a video (see below) that shows giant CMEs erupting and spreading across the inner Solar System. The images also show Venus, Jupiter, the Moon (visible as bright spots), and several constellations like Orion and Pleiades in the background.
During its two-year primary mission, PUNCH will continue to make global 3D observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere and the inner solar system. These detailed images will help scientists better understand space weather, which can disrupt communications, satellites, and missions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and will improve predictive models. "These first images are astonishing, but the best is still yet to come," said DeForest. "Once the spacecraft are in their final formation, we'll be able to routinely track space weather in 3D across the entire inner solar system."
