Abbey Interrante

Washington, D.C.

Science Writer at NASA Blogs

This account is inactive. Science writer // @JohnsHopkins science writing alum // Views are my own

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Articles

NASA’s PUNCH Just Snapped the Sun’s Secrets in Stunning New Detail

1 month ago | scitechdaily.com | Abbey Interrante |Mike O'Neill

An artist’s concept shows the four satellites of NASA’s PUNCH mission observing the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. Credit: Southwest Research Institute NASA’s new PUNCH mission just opened its eyes to space, capturing its first images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere and the surrounding solar system. With four satellites now fully activated, scientists are calibrating their instruments to peel away light pollution and unveil the delicate strands of solar wind as they drift through space.
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Captures First Images of Sun, Space

1 month ago | blogs.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission successfully completed spacecraft commissioning this week, opening its instrument doors to capture “first light”, the mission’s first images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere and the surrounding space. This is the first step in revealing new details of how the solar atmosphere unfolds and streams through the solar system. Now, mission operation teams will continue the commissioning phase for the spacecraft’s instruments.
NASA’s PUNCH Begins Mission to Study Solar Wind

2 months ago | blogs.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

Mission controllers for NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) have received full acquisition of signal from the four small satellites, indicating that they are functioning normally and at full power. Over a two-year planned mission, PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and how it becomes the solar wind.
NASA's PUNCH mission to revolutionize our view of solar wind

Feb 24, 2025 | phys.org | Abbey Interrante

The Earth is immersed in material streaming from the sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Nears Launch

Feb 21, 2025 | blogs.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure. NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission will be the first to image the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and solar wind together to better understand the Sun, solar wind, and Earth as a single connected system.
NASA CubeSat Finds New Radiation Belts After May 2024 Solar Storm

Feb 6, 2025 | science.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

The May 2024 solar storm created two new temporary belts of high-energy particles surrounding Earth. Such belts have been seen before, but the new ones were particularly long lasting, especially the new proton belt. The findings are particularly important for spacecraft launching into geostationary orbits, which can be damaged as they traverse the dangerous belts. The largest solar storm in two decades hit Earth in May 2024.
IMAP Instrument Installations Complete

Jan 16, 2025 | blogs.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

With the installation of a charged particle detector on Dec. 3, 2024, all 10 of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) science instruments have been fully integrated on the spacecraft. Slated to launch no earlier than September 2025, IMAP will map the boundaries of the heliosphere — the protective bubble surrounding the Sun and planets that is inflated by the constant stream of particles from the Sun called the solar wind.
Darkness Unleashed: NASA’s Breakthrough Discoveries From the 2024 Solar Eclipse

Dec 23, 2024 | scitechdaily.com | Abbey Interrante |Vanessa Thomas

The 2024 solar eclipse across North America spurred numerous NASA-supported research projects that observed the eclipse’s impact on the sun’s corona, Earth’s atmosphere, and radio communications. Significant data were gathered from ground-based telescopes, aircraft, amateur radio transmissions, and student-launched high-altitude balloons.
NASA's solar eclipse experiments yield intriguing early data

Dec 10, 2024 | phys.org | Abbey Interrante |Vanessa Thomas

On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse swept across North America, from the western shores of Mexico, through the United States, and into northeastern Canada. For the eclipse, NASA helped fund numerous research projects and called upon citizen scientists in support of NASA's goal to understand how our home planet is affected by the sun—including, for example, how our star interacts with Earth's atmosphere and affects radio communications.
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Targeting Launch in Late February 2025

Dec 10, 2024 | blogs.nasa.gov | Abbey Interrante

NASA and SpaceX are targeting late February 2025 for the launch of NASA’s PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites heading to low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become the solar wind.