SAN ANTONIO — April 17, 2025 —The Southwest Research Institute-led Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission collected its first images following its March 11 launch into polar orbit around the Earth. The mission’s four small suitcase-sized spacecraft will act as a single virtual instrument 8,000 miles across to image the solar corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, as it transitions into the solar wind that fills and defines our solar system.