Scientists announced on Friday (April 18) that the newest solar investigator in town has captured its first-light images — or should I say the newest solar investigators. That is, this NASA sun-studying mission, named PUNCH, is technically made up of four small satellites that are strategically distributed in our planet's orbit. The quartet is designed, however, to work together as a single instrument with the power to decode some of our star's biggest mysteries.
"All four instruments are functioning as designed. We're excited to finish on-orbit commissioning and get these cameras working together," Craig DeForest, at the Solar System Science and Exploration Division of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement.
