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NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions
Context:
NASA has successfully launched two groundbreaking missions, SPHEREx and PUNCH, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 11 at 8:10 p.m. PDT. These missions aim to enhance our understanding of the universe and the Sun, from studying the origins of galaxies to exploring the solar wind.
Mission Goals and Timelines
- Both missions will operate in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit, ensuring the Sun remains consistently positioned relative to the spacecraft.
- SPHEREx will begin its two-year mission after a one-month checkout period. Its scientific data will provide a wide perspective on the cosmos and deepen our understanding of the universe’s origins and evolution.
PUNCH will undergo a 90-day commissioning period, during which the spacecraft will align and calibrate its instruments. Afterwards, the mission will begin analysing the Sun’s corona and solar wind dynamics.
SPHEREx: Unveiling the Origins of the Universe
- The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission will focus on mapping the universe’s history.
- SPHEREx will spend its two-year mission period creating a 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months.
- This comprehensive perspective will complement the work of other space telescopes, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, which observe smaller sections of the sky in more detail.
- The mission will use spectroscopy to measure the distance to over 450 million galaxies in the nearby universe and examine the cosmic glow from these galaxies to understand their formation and evolution.
- SPHEREx will also explore the Milky Way for frozen water ice and other essential molecules like carbon dioxide, which are crucial for life as we know it.
- SPHEREx is expected to provide critical insights into cosmic events such as inflation, a period of rapid expansion in the early universe.
- The observatory’s data will help answer profound questions about how the universe began and where the building blocks of life are found.
PUNCH: Studying the Sun’s Solar Wind
- Riding along with SPHEREx is the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), a mission designed to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind.
- The PUNCH mission consists of four small satellites that will observe the solar corona and investigate how solar wind is generated and how it affects space weather.
- PUNCH’s primary objective is to understand the formation and evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can generate energetic particle radiation that may pose risks to astronauts and spacecraft.
- By capturing detailed 3D images of the solar wind, PUNCH aims to answer basic questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds and the impact of space weather events on Earth.
Collaboration and Mission Details
- SPHEREx is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and led by Caltech. The spacecraft was built by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace), and its data will be publicly available through the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
- PUNCH is led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with the four satellites and Wide Field Imager instruments built at SwRI’s headquarters in Texas. The Narrow Field Imager was built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. PUNCH’s mission will be managed by NASA’s Explorers Program Office at Goddard Space Flight Center.
