NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission has successfully completed its spacecraft commissioning phase, opening the doors to capture its first images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere and surrounding space. The Narrow Field Imager (NFI) and two Wide Field Imageters (WFIs) captured their first images on April 14 and 16, respectively.
The NFI image shows star fields with the Sun near the center, while the WFIs offer a wide field of view from space. Scientists are calibrating these images to reveal more details about the Sun’s corona, which will help track the faint threads of solar material as it flows outward through space.
These early images confirm that NASA’s cameras onboard four satellites are in focus and functioning correctly. The PUNCH mission aims to make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere to understand how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that can impact spacecraft and astronauts.
The PUNCH team will now continue calibrating the images to highlight the faint stream of solar wind as it travels toward Earth. Once complete, the mission will provide the first-ever imagery of the solar wind and coronal mass ejections in polarized light, enabling scientists to discern new information about this activity.
Source: https://blogs.nasa.gov/punch/2025/04/17/nasas-punch-mission-captures-first-images-of-sun-space