Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH)

NASA will not hold the SPHEREx and PUNCH prelaunch news conference on Monday, March 3. The agency will share more information as soon as possible.

NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than Sunday, March 2, for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions.

Launching no earlier than Feb. 28, 2025, 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.

NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 10:09 p.m. EST (7:09 p.m. PST) on Friday, Feb. 28, for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions. The new date will allow additional time to ensure the vehicle’s readiness ahead of liftoff.

The four small satellites of NASA’s PUNCH mission arrived Saturday, Jan. 18, at Astrotech Space Operations located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for final processing before launch.

NASA’s SPHEREx spacecraft arrived Tuesday, Jan. 14, at Astrotech Space Operations located inside Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for final processing before launching on its two-year mission.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting late February 2025 for the launch of NASA’s PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Students at the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder are collaborating with NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission and the Colorado Center for the Blind to develop tactile representations of two ancient petroglyphs (rock carvings).

NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will share a ride to space with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission.

NASA's PUNCH mission – short for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere – passed a mission review on July 23, 2021, moving the mission into its next phase with a new target launch readiness date of October 2023.