NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 4, to share information about the agency's upcoming PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which is targeted to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.

The agency's PUNCH mission is a constellation of four small satellites. When they arrive in low Earth orbit, the satellites will make global, 3D observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, and help NASA learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is a U.S. government agency that is responsible for science and technology related to air and space.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program, aeronautics research and space research.

Established in 1958, it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the US space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science.

It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle.

Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Commercial Crew Program, and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the lunar Artemis program

Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency's website at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

By imaging the Sun's corona and the solar wind together, scientists hope to better understand the entire inner heliosphere – Sun, solar wind, and Earth – as a single connected system.

The PUNCH mission will share a ride to space with NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) space telescope on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, leads the PUNCH mission. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

 

Source: prnewswire.com

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