On Sunday, March 2, 2025, the night sky over California’s south-central coast will be illuminated by the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Along with a small near-infrared observatory named SPHEREx, the NASA payload will include the PUNCH mission, which contains three Tele Vue Optical Lens Assemblies. Tele Vue was honored to be chosen for the project by the lead scientist, who, along with several colleagues at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), is a long-time admirer of Tele Vue eyepieces and telescopes.
Image credit: SwRI and UCAR.
The weekend will feature two major events in California, as the PUNCH launch coincides with the debut of the Nagler Type 7 eyepieces at Woodland Hills Camera & Telescope.
March 1, 2025 (11 AM – 4 PM)
Woodland Hills Camera & Telescope
5348 Topanga Canyon Blvd, Woodland Hills, CA
David and Sandy Nagler will be present at Woodland Hills Camera & Telescope on March 1, 2025, offering attendees an exclusive opportunity to explore the new Nagler Type 7 eyepieces. This event will provide astronomy enthusiasts with firsthand experience and insights into the Nagler Type 7 and other Tele Vue products.
PUNCH, or the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere, consists of four small satellites, each weighing approximately 45 kg (100 lbs). These satellites will be deployed into a 600 km-high, 90-minute polar Sun-synchronous orbit above Earth’s day/night terminator. Once in space, the satellites will gradually precess as Earth orbits the Sun, allowing their instruments to maintain a constant view of the Sun.
Three of the suitcase-sized satellites will be equipped with a Tele Vue-designed and manufactured objective lens for the Wide Field Imager (WFI) cameras. These lenses cover a 53° field of view across a 34.9 mm diagonal and are specially engineered to meet NASA’s launch and space durability standards. The cameras will work in tandem to capture images of the solar wind, spanning from 1.5° (6 R?) to 45° (180 R?) from the Sun. This solar wind not only creates the stunning auroras but also poses risks to power grids, satellites, and astronauts.
The fourth satellite will house the Narrow Field Imager (NFI), a coronagraph operating at f/4, designed to observe the solar corona and the immediate area surrounding the Sun. The fields of view of the three WFI cameras will slightly overlap with one another and with the NFI, ensuring continuous coverage of the entire inner solar system. This marks a significant milestone as the first solar observation mission of its kind.
With PUNCH, scientists aim to gain a deeper understanding of the Sun, the solar wind, and their impact on humanity. The two primary scientific objectives are:
Understanding how coronal structures become the ambient solar wind. Surprisingly little is known about the young solar wind as it departs from the corona. PUNCH seeks to answer key questions:
Understanding transient structures in the young solar wind. The solar wind is not a steady stream, it is disrupted by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), shocks, and other transient effects. PUNCH will capture these structures in 3D as they travel across the inner solar system, providing critical data to help predict space weather. The mission will also investigate:
The WFI cameras are equipped with 8 GB CCD sensors that will take images of the Sun every 48 seconds using various polarizing filters. Between exposures, a filter wheel will spin, allowing vibrations to settle before the next image is captured. Each satellite is expected to generate 1.41 GB of compressed data per day, which will be stored onboard and transmitted to Earth via an X-band downlink (28.57 Mbit/s) with forward error correction every few days. The onboard computers will flag objects of interest in the images, including comets.
The mission is designed to last two years, with the possibility of an extension to five years. After this period, the CCD cameras will degrade due to exposure to charged particles, rendering them ineffective for further scientific observations. The PUNCH satellites will eventually re-enter Earth’s atmosphere approximately 25 years after launch. Additional details about NASA’s PUNCH mission can be found on the SwRI mission page.
Address:
1855 S Ingram Mill Rd
STE# 201
Springfield, Mo 65804
Phone: 1-844-277-3386
Fax: 417-429-2935
E-Mail: hello@scopetrader.com