NASA has started another mission! This time it has nothing to do with Mars, the goal now is to understand how solar wind works. As every NASA mission, its results could be an open window for other unknown topics about the universe and our planet Earth. I’m sure this mission will have a lot of ‘PUNCH’ for humankind. Let’s have a look at what NASA has planned this time!
NASA and the Sun
Currently, NASA has 20 active missions and 10 upcoming ones, so the interest in the Sun is very high. The Sun is the star in our Solar System and it is the main factor for why the solar system sticks together. This star has many features that we, as average human beings, may not be aware of. We know the sun shines but it is also capable of moving particles around space and filling the Solar System with them, and this is what they are studying now.
NASA’s ‘PUNCH’ list
NASA’s checklist is getting more completed step by step and on the 11th of March started another mission called ‘PUNCH’ (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), to study how that solar wind is thrown to the Solar System.
This mission consists of 4 small satellites circling around Earth and each of them has cameras integrated to take pictures of the Sun and space. These cameras are not regular ones, they have specific aims. There are two types of cameras: NFI (narrow field imager) used for details and WFI (wide field imager) used to see a bigger image of the space.
Pictures of the NFI camera
This camera uses a coronagraph, which allows it to see objects, like the sun’s corona, nearby the Sun by blocking out the light coming from it. However, they made a mistake by not putting the coronagraph properly and guess what… they succeeded! They got the perfect image of the New Moon.
It was its first picture and it was due to a bit of sunlight appearing in the picture and they could see a bright ring and a larger halo of light catching all the attention. At this moment the New Moon was caught because it was perfectly illuminated by the bouncing of the sunlight on Earth and then reaching the Moon.
Were WFI cameras successful too?
The WFI-1, WFI-2 and WFI-3 cameras took pictures of stars, constellations and space dust. All of them captured different groups of stars such as Pleiades, similar to a spoon shape, or Hyades similar to a V shape.
The WFI-2 is more special than the others because it uses filters to see how light polarizes. This allows us to see the zodiacal light, which is a soft shine created by the crashing of sunlight against space dust, and also the directions the light waves go.
Relevance of the mission
This mission’s beginning is done to test the tools and see what scientists can improve, and they can calibrate them to send them again and obtain images as precise as possible. After this, it is the big deal, data! With the discoveries scientists may make, they could understand how the Sun and its solar wind affects to space weather, why the solar storms hamper satellites and how the Solar System was created and changed.
Imagine how many fascinating things we will be able to see and know once they really start the mission and obtain more data from the Sun and space. Again, science is showing its worth and how little we know about way far from the Earth. We’ll see how this mission goes and its future results.