Dipankar Banerjee selected as Co-Investigator for NASA’s PUNCH mission

NASA has selected Texas-based Southwest Research Institute to lead its PUNCH mission which will image the Sun. This is a landmark mission that will image regions beyond the Sun’s outer corona. Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is also a Co-Investigator of the PUNCH mission. The acronym ‘PUNCH’ stands for “Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere”. The PUNCH mission is focused on understanding the transition of particles from the Sun’s outer corona to the solar wind that fills interplanetary space. India is also planning to send up its own satellite Aditya-L1, a mission to study the Sun’s corona, and Prof. Banerjee is the co-Chair of the Science Working Group.