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- Written by: Abbey Interrante
Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission will be the first to image the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and solar wind together to better understand the Sun, solar wind, and Earth as a single connected system.
Launching no earlier than Feb. 28, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how potentially disruptive solar events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space.
“What we hope PUNCH will bring to humanity is the ability to really see, for the first time, where we live inside the solar wind itself,” said Craig DeForest, principal investigator for PUNCH at Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado.
Seeing solar wind in 3D
The PUNCH mission’s four suitcase-sized satellites have overlapping fields of view that combine to cover a larger swath of sky than any previous mission focused on the corona and solar wind.
The satellites will spread out in low Earth orbit to construct a global view of the solar corona and its transition to the solar wind. They will also track solar storms like coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Their Sun-synchronous orbit will enable them to see the Sun 24/7, with their view only occasionally blocked by Earth.
Typical camera images are two dimensional, compressing the 3D subject into a flat plane and losing information. But PUNCH takes advantage of a property of light called polarization to reconstruct its images in 3D.
As the Sun’s light bounces off material in the corona and solar wind, it becomes polarized — meaning the light waves oscillate in a particular way that can be filtered, much like how polarized sunglasses filter out glare off of water or metal. Each PUNCH spacecraft is equipped with a polarimeter that uses three distinct polarizing filters to capture information about the direction that material is moving that would be lost in typical images.
“This new perspective will allow scientists to discern the exact trajectory and speed of coronal mass ejections as they move through the inner solar system,” said DeForest. “This improves on current instruments in two ways: with three-dimensional imaging that lets us locate and track CMEs which are coming directly toward us; and with a broad field of view, which lets us track those CMEs all the way from the Sun to Earth.”
All four spacecraft are synchronized to serve as a single “virtual instrument” that spans the whole PUNCH constellation.
The PUNCH satellites include one Narrow Field Imager and three Wide Field Imagers. The Narrow Field Imager, is a coronagraph, which blocks out the bright light from the Sun to better see details in the Sun’s corona, recreating what viewers on Earth see during a total solar eclipse when the Moon blocks the face of the Sun — a narrower view that sees the solar wind closer to the Sun.
The Wide Field Imagers are heliospheric imagers that view the very faint, outermost portion of the solar corona and the solar wind itself — giving a wide view of the solar wind as it spreads out into the solar system.
“I’m most excited to see the ‘inbetweeny’ activity in the solar wind,” said Nicholeen Viall, PUNCH mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This means not just the biggest structures, like CMEs, or the smallest interactions, but all the different types of solar wind structures that fill that in between area.”
When these solar wind structures from the Sun reach Earth’s magnetic field, they can drive dynamics that affect Earth's radiation belts. To launch spacecraft through these belts, including ones that will carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond, scientists need to understand the solar wind structure and changes in this region.
Building off other missions
“The PUNCH mission is built on the shoulders of giants,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, PUNCH program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “For decades, heliophysics missions have provided us with glimpses of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind, each offering critical yet partial views of our dynamic star’s influence on the solar system.”
When scientists combine data from PUNCH and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which flies through the Sun’s corona, they will see both the big picture and the up-close details. Working together, Parker Solar Probe and PUNCH span a field of view from a little more than half a mile (1 kilometer) to over 160 million miles (about 260 million kilometers).
Additionally, the PUNCH team will combine their data with diverse observations from other missions, like NASA’s CODEX (Coronal Diagnostic Experiment) technology demonstration, which views the corona even closer to the surface of the Sun from its vantage point on the International Space Station.
PUNCH’s data also complements observations from NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) — targeted for launch in March 2025 — which investigates the magnetic field perturbations associated with Earth’s high-altitude auroras that PUNCH will also spot in its wide-field view.
As the solar wind that PUNCH will observe travels away from the Sun and Earth, it will then be studied by the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, mission, which is targeting a launch in 2025.
“The PUNCH mission will bridge these perspectives, providing an unprecedented continuous view that connects the birthplace of the solar wind in the corona to its evolution across interplanetary space,” said Guhathakurta.
The PUNCH mission is scheduled to conduct science for at least two years, following a 90-day commissioning period after launch. The mission is launching as a rideshare with the agency’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer).
“PUNCH is the latest heliophysics addition to the NASA fleet that delivers groundbreaking science every second of every day,” said Joe Westlake, heliophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Launching this mission as a rideshare bolsters its value to the nation by optimizing every pound of launch capacity to maximize the scientific return for the cost of a single launch.”
The PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s offices in San Antonio, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA Goddard for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Abbey Interrante writes for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The crash took place on the evening of Sunday, Feb. 16, according to the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office.
The CHP said the crash occurred on Highway 20 near Watertrough Road, east of Clearlake Oaks.
A Redwood Valley family was returning from a high school rodeo in Corning when they were involved in the wreck.
CHP Sgt. Josh Dye said they were driving an RV towing a horse trailer and for reasons still under investigation lost control.
“When the RV overturned and slid to the edge of the embankment, the horse trailer became detached and went down the embankment,” Dye said.
Dye said it is a very steep embankment and quite a ways down from the highway.
He said two horses were killed and a third was severely injured and was dispatched by the driver and owner of the horses.
Along with the CHP, Dye said Northshore Fire responded to the scene.
The people in the vehicle were unhurt, Dye said.
A GoFundMe has been organized by Kirstin McCready to assist the family who lost the horses, identified as Shasta Jameson-Green and Nick Gradek and their children Emerald, Willow and Juniper.
The horses who died were named Poco, 45 and Doug.
“These animals were more than just horses—they were family, deeply loved by their owners and their children, with countless irreplaceable memories shared,” the GoFundMe page explains.
“These horses meant everything to this family. The love, time, and financial investment they dedicated to their children's dreams were taken from them in an instant,” the online fundraiser explained.
As of early Saturday morning, the GoFundMe page had raised $31,490, with a goal of $45,000.
Other fundraisers are also being held for the family, including the “Give Back Barrel Race” that Lake County District 1 Supervisor Helen Owen is hosting at her ranch in Middletown on March 2.
Dye confirmed that the wreck occurred in the same area of Highway 20 where there have been two previous wrecks involving livestock.
One of them, a year ago this month, involved a big rig full of 36 cattle traveling from Orland to Arcata that rolled onto its side.
In October 2023, a double-decker livestock trailer with 79 head of cattle on board and traveling from Fortuna to Tennessee flipped over after taking the turns in that stretch of highway too fast, according to the CHP.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Salvador Reyes Fregoso, 39, Clearlake, was identified as the crash victim, said Lauren Berlinn of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Berlinn said Reyes Fregoso was reported missing on Jan. 28 after he didn’t return home.
The day after Reyes Fregoso was reported missing, California Highway Patrol officers were dispatched to assist the sheriff’s office with a fatality traffic collision.
Reyes Fregoso’s body was found by CHP officers and deputies in his vehicle, which was down a steep embankment on High Valley Road near Valley Oak Drive in the Clearlake Oaks area.
The CHP is leading the investigation into the crash.
“As of our investigation it appears this was an alcohol related solo vehicle crash,” Sgt. Joel Skeen told Lake County News.
Skeen said he wouldn’t have more information available to share until the crash investigation is completed.
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The impacted employees were fired without any notice to Congress about where these individuals are located or the divisions in which they work.
The lawmakers wrote: “This is yet another example of the current administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce without taking into consideration its impact on the American people or our government’s overall budget. As we are in the midst of this year’s tax filing season, mass layoffs at the IRS will undoubtably have negative consequences on tax administration and American taxpayers.
“Aside from the immediate harm and potential delays taxpayers will face, this is the first step in the administration’s unlawful attempt to abolish the IRS,” they continued.
The full text of the letter is below.
Dear Secretary Bessent,
We write to express our serious concern regarding reports that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) laid off nearly 7,000 of its 15,000 probationary employees without any notice to Congress about where these individuals are located or the divisions in which they work. This is yet another example of the current administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce without taking into consideration its impact on the American people or our government’s overall budget. As we are in the midst of this year’s tax filing season, mass layoffs at the IRS will undoubtably have negative consequences on tax administration and American taxpayers. Aside from the immediate harm and potential delays taxpayers will face, this is the first step in the administration’s unlawful attempt to abolish the IRS. A mass termination of IRS employees is unprecedented.
As you know, the IRS functions as the United States’ main revenue collection agency. It ensures taxes are collected, fraud is investigated and prosecuted, refunds are timely paid, and taxpayers’ questions are answered. An efficient and properly staffed IRS is necessary for carrying out these essential functions.
Terminating thousands of employees, without any due process, will not only disrupt IRS functions, but will have catastrophic consequences for these public servants and their families. Given the severity of the consequences of an understaffed IRS, we urge you to halt any further plans for mass firings.
Thompson represents California’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Lake, Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties. He is a senior member of the House Committee on Ways and Means.
