Check the first vibrant image of Punch, a NASA mission that strikes the Earth with some elegant sun shots.
PUNCH – Short to the Polarimter to unify Corona and Heliopier –It was launched in the low -Earth orbit Last month, her first pictures were taken in what we hope to be a fruitful period of scientific discovery.
Punk consists of four satellites that revolve around each other in a constellation. Tools the size of a single bag bag include a space -level weather detector (12900 km). The punch was accused of monitoring how the solar magazine gives the path to the solar winds, and the molecules charged with an activity of the sun Aurora caused Here on the ground.
After spending a few weeks in getting their equipment, all four satellites have now opened the photography doors. Craig Diorst, the main researcher at the mission, said at the South West Research Institute Release. “We are excited to end the assignment of orbit and get these cameras that work together.”
Punch – Coronagraph and IMAGERS cameras are designed to monitor the most faint edges in solar corona and solar wind, which are features on the vicinity of our host star that is difficult to define due to the sun’s brightness.
The solar wind flows from the sun more than a million miles per hour (1.61 million km per hour), and its features are less than 0.1 % like the Milky Way. In its photography process, the punch should remove the light of the distant stars, the light that reflects the dust between the planets, and the standard digital noise.
But this is not all, people. Punch missile engines are the volume of water -powered lead and energy glasses. The size of the small engines is only enough to give a single -inch kick punch (centimeter per second), which the task needs to keep the constellation in a stable orbit.
“It is a panguch is the first aliens that depend on this type of engine, which carries a safe, non -toxic and non -toxic motivation,” Decorist said. “Safety and stability deserves all this effort, although defenses are more complicated than traditional Hydrazine missiles.”
This is just a preamble to the big Lansha Bang. Space vehicles are currently going through a 90 -day assignment period, and the task of science will not start until June. But the current steps are crucial for the team to ensure that Punk liquidates all the light that will properly expose them to solar wind. The gentle soft glow in the upper image – the first light of the emerging spacecraft – is the shiny light of dust particles around the sun.
Punch researchers will help stay ready for solar winds – and solar storms – which blow active particles on our planet. Those Storms can overlap With electronics on Earth, including the power network, which makes it important to keep pace with scientists on the latest dynamics from the surface of our star.
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