The scope of the meeting reflects the extraordinary breadth of modern planetary research. Sessions will span the full spectrum of the discipline: new results from the Solar System, the characterization of exoplanetary and interstellar bodies, updates on current and forthcoming space missions, ground-based observational campaigns, and the increasingly prominent role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in extracting insight from planetary data. Planetary defence, the emergence of life in our Solar System and beyond, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — SETI — all feature prominently on the programme, a signal of how far the field has expanded from its geology-and-telescopes origins into a genuinely interdisciplinary enterprise that touches on astrobiology, engineering, data science and even public policy.

The choice of host city carries a poetic resonance for attendees. The Hague holds a singular place in the history of astronomy: it was the birthplace of Christiaan Huygens, the seventeenth-century polymath who pioneered the telescope and discovered Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The city was also the site of the world’s first published written account of an astronomical observation made with a telescope — a milestone that effectively inaugurated the era of observational planetary science. Four centuries later, a Congress devoted to exploring Titan’s methane lakes, Saturn’s rings and the distant corners of the Solar System returning to Huygens’ hometown is more than a logistical coincidence; it is a deliberate act of historical continuity. Organizers have embraced this connection, planning an extensive public outreach programme in the run-up to and during the conference week, including a walking tour threading through the city’s astronomical heritage, concerts, arts installations, public lectures and events designed for local schools.

For media representatives, the Congress offers unusually rich material. Media registration is free, and bona fide journalists can register by contacting the Europlanet press office. Press briefings will be livestreamed for remote audiences, and the EPSC2026 Press Office will issue press notices throughout the week highlighting presentations of particular interest. Two briefings, in particular, are already generating considerable buzz among space scientists and space journalists alike — and both concern European missions arriving at pivotal moments in their operational lifetimes.

The first, scheduled for Monday 7 September at 11:00 CEST, will focus on the European Space Agency’s Hera mission as it counts down to its arrival at the Didymos binary asteroid system. Hera represents the follow-up act to one of the most dramatic planetary science experiments ever conducted: NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which deliberately impacted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022 to test humanity’s ability to alter the trajectory of a near-Earth object. DART succeeded spectacularly, shortening Dimorphos’ orbital period around its parent asteroid and proving that the kinetic impactor technique is a viable planetary defence strategy. But the experiment left behind critical unanswered questions — most notably, the precise internal structure of Dimorphos and the detailed physics of how the impact crater formed and how momentum was transferred. Hera, arriving at the system in November 2026, will conduct a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos, transforming a one-off experiment into a fully characterized planetary defence benchmark.

The press briefing will provide updates on the status and plans for the mission post-arrival, but organizers have also promised something more: the Hera team will unveil what they describe as a revolutionary way for the public to engage with the mission and become part of its space adventure. The briefing will also cover the ESA/JAXA RAMSES mission, which will rendezvous with the asteroid (99942) Apophis and accompany it during its exceptionally close flyby of Earth on 13 April 2029 — a natural experiment in asteroid science that occurs only once every few thousand years for an object of this size. Speakers will include Michael Küppers, ESA Hera Project Scientist at ESA-ESAC in Spain; Patrick Michel, Hera Mission Principal Investigator, RAMSES ESA Project Scientist and Director of Research at CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France; and Heli Greus of the Hera and RAMSES ESA project teams. Together, these missions represent Europe’s commitment to building a comprehensive, layered planetary defence capability — from impact prediction to impact response.

The second major briefing, on Wednesday 9 September at 12:45 CEST, concerns the long-awaited arrival of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission at Mercury. After an eight-year journey through the inner Solar System, involving a series of gravity assists that have tested the patience of mission planners and the endurance of the spacecraft’s thermal systems, BepiColombo will finally reach its destination this autumn. The timeline is tightly choreographed: separation of the European and Japanese orbiters from the Mercury Transfer Module will take place on 3 September, orbit insertion follows on 21 November, and the ESA Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mio spacecraft will separate from each other on 9–10 December. From that moment, BepiColombo will officially become the first two-spacecraft mission operating at Mercury, with the science phase beginning in April 2027.

The significance of this architecture cannot be overstated. Mercury remains the least explored of the terrestrial planets, a world of extremes where surface temperatures swing from searing daylight to frigid darkness and where a surprisingly strong magnetic field hints at a partially molten core. Operating two spacecraft simultaneously — one optimized by ESA, the other by JAXA with a complementary instrument suite — allows scientists to make coordinated, two-point measurements of the planet’s magnetic environment, exosphere and magnetospheric dynamics that no single spacecraft could achieve. The briefing will feature Santa Martinez, Mission Manager; Ignacio Tanco, Head of the Inner Solar System Missions Unit; Geraint Jones, Lead ESA Project Scientist; and Go Murakami, JAXA Project Scientist, offering an update on the spacecraft’s condition following the transfer module separation and an overview of the critical steps ahead.

Beyond the headline briefings, the Congress programme offers a window into the techniques reshaping planetary science itself. The dedicated sessions on artificial intelligence and machine learning reflect a discipline undergoing a methodological transformation: convolutional neural networks now classify craters and surface features across vast planetary image archives, while machine learning pipelines sift through the exponential growth of data returned by modern instrumentation. Sessions on interstellar bodies will revisit the paradigm shift that began with the detection of objects such as ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov — visitors from other star systems whose compositions offer the only direct sampling of material formed around alien suns. Planetary defence sessions will build on the momentum of DART and the anticipation surrounding both Hera and RAMSES, while astrobiology and SETI sessions will tackle what many consider the deepest question in science: whether life is a cosmic inevitability or an improbable fluke.

The hybrid format, which proved its worth in recent editions of the Congress, ensures that scientists unable to travel — whether for financial, political or personal reasons — can still participate fully in sessions and discussions, a model that has measurably broadened participation across the more than 40 countries represented. Details of scientific sessions and presentation abstracts are available through the official EPSC2026 website, alongside a programme overview and information about the public walking trail and events in The Hague. The meeting hashtag, #EPSC2026, will aggregate real-time discussion throughout the week.

What emerges from the programme as a whole is a portrait of planetary science at an inflection point. Within a single year, Europe has missions arriving at Mercury and at a battered asteroid moonlet, a planetary defence mission to Apophis in development, and a community embracing computational tools that would have seemed like science fiction a generation ago. That all of this converges in the city where humanity first recorded what it saw through a telescope gives EPSC2026 a narrative arc that few scientific conferences can claim. From Huygens’ crude refractor to a two-spacecraft orbital mission at the innermost planet, the through-line is unbroken: an unrelenting curiosity about the worlds beyond our own, now armed with instruments and international cooperation that the Dutch master himself could scarcely have imagined. For the 1,200 scientists gathering in The Hague this September, the next chapter of that four-century-old story is about to be written.

News Publication Date: 6-Sep-2026

Web References: Not provided

References: Media reminder: Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2026. EurekAlert! Not provided.

Keywords

Europlanet Science Congress, EPSC2026, planetary science, Hera mission, BepiColombo, Mercury, Dimorphos, asteroid deflection, planetary defence, RAMSES, Apophis, The Hague

At the core of PUNCH’s design lies its unique capability to act as a single, virtual instrument spanning some 8,000 miles. This enormous synthetic aperture enables unprecedented imaging of the solar corona and its gradual transition into the solar wind—a supersonic stream of charged particles that flows out from the Sun and shapes space weather near Earth and throughout the solar system. By capturing these phenomena with exceptional clarity, PUNCH aims to unravel long-standing mysteries about the corona’s structure and the forces propelling solar wind particles outward at speeds exceeding one million miles per hour.

On April 14, 2025, two of PUNCH’s primary instruments—the Near Field Imager (NFI) and one of the Wide Field Imagers (WFI)—successfully opened their instrument doors and collected initial images. These early captures demonstrate that the onboard cameras are sharply in focus and functioning correctly, revealing the deep-field night sky set against the bright backdrop of space near the Sun’s noontime glare. Among the visible features in these images are familiar celestial landmarks such as the Taurus constellation and the iconic Pleiades cluster. Additionally, a subtle diffuse glow known as zodiacal light, caused by sunlight reflecting off microscopic dust particles orbiting within the inner solar system, is clearly discernible.

The subsequent days brought further validation of the technology as the remaining two WFI instruments commenced their first-light imaging sequences on April 16. Dr. Craig DeForest, PUNCH’s Principal Investigator and a respected voice in solar system science at SwRI, highlighted the technical achievement of having all four instruments operating flawlessly. As commissioning proceeds over the 90-day testing window managed from SwRI’s Mission Operations Center, the team is busy calibrating these instruments to unprecedented levels of precision.

Central to the mission’s scientific ambition are the four spacecraft that compose the PUNCH constellation. One of these satellites is equipped with the NFI coronagraph, developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, designed to image the Sun’s corona continuously and with high contrast. The remaining three carry SwRI’s expertly engineered WFIs, specialized “heliospheric imagers” that delve even farther, capturing the faint edge of the corona and the elusive solar wind. The challenge is immense since the brightness of solar wind features is less than one-thousandth of a percent of the star field and galactic background light captured in raw images. Extracting meaningful solar wind data thus demands meticulous removal of stars, zodiacal light, and other signals while retaining the faint electrical glow streaming from the Sun.

A remarkable innovation onboard these satellites lies in their propulsion system, featuring compact, water-powered “shot-glass-sized” rocket engines. These novel thrusters utilize electrolysis to split onboard water into hydrogen and oxygen, which are subsequently combusted to produce thrust. Each burst delivers a subtle but critical velocity adjustment, on the order of just a fraction of an inch per second, allowing the spacecraft to maintain precise constellation geometry essential for coherent imaging across vast spatial scales. This system joins the ranks of the first space missions to incorporate such safe, inert, and non-toxic propulsion technology, which contrasts with the hazardous hydrazine fuel systems traditionally used in spacecraft maneuvering.

Data acquisition within each instrument is designed for efficiency and scientific rigor. Every four minutes, the onboard cameras collect a trio of images using three distinct polarizing filters. This polarization data is crucial, enabling researchers to discern the directional movement and physical properties of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and other solar wind structures in three dimensions. Unlike conventional coronagraphs, which have largely been confined to two-dimensional imaging of the corona alone, PUNCH’s multi-angle polarization technique promises to revolutionize our understanding of solar wind dynamics and space weather forecasting.

With the commissioning phase wrapping up by June 2025, the Science Operations Center will commence regular data reception, processing, and distribution to NASA and the global scientific community. This data pipeline is expected to provide unprecedented insights into the interplay between the Sun’s outer atmosphere and the heliosphere—the vast bubble carved out by solar wind within the interstellar medium. Researchers anticipate that the mission will enhance our ability to predict the onset and trajectory of solar storms that can disrupt satellite communications, power grids, and aviation systems.

The first light images from PUNCH also hold particular aesthetic and scientific fascination. The visible zodiacal light, often elusive in terrestrial observations, is a continuous reminder of the dust-filled environment within which our solar system resides. This delicate haze reflects sunlight and provides critical clues about the distribution and evolution of fine particulate matter, factors influencing planetary formation and solar system evolution models.

In addition to these observational breakthroughs, PUNCH serves as a pathfinder for innovative spacecraft engineering and mission architecture. The collaborative development between SwRI and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory marries expertise in solar imaging with cutting-edge spacecraft technology, showcasing how small, coordinated satellites can deliver results previously reserved for much larger missions. This inspires new thinking on the cost-effective, adaptive deployment of constellation missions aimed at dynamic Earth and space environments.

As the mission moves from commissioning into full science operations, the PUNCH team is poised to extend humanity’s gaze deeper into the Sun’s influence, offering fresh perspectives on fundamental astrophysical questions. This mission not only addresses the complexities of solar wind origin and acceleration but also exemplifies the fusion of innovative propulsion and precise optical instrumentation, setting a precedent for future missions exploring the vast frontiers of heliophysics and beyond.

The coming months promise a wealth of data and discoveries, as PUNCH’s virtual giant eye remains fixed on the ever-changing corona, eagerly awaiting the next solar events that will illuminate the inner workings of our star’s relationship with the space that surrounds it. Scientists and space enthusiasts alike are encouraged to watch this pioneering mission’s progress, which will undoubtedly shape our understanding of the solar system for decades to come.

Subject of Research: Solar corona, Solar wind, Heliosphere, and space weather phenomena observed via advanced heliospheric imaging.

Article Title: PUNCH Mission’s First-Light Images Open New Frontiers in Solar Wind Observation

News Publication Date: April 17, 2025

Web References: https://www.swri.org/markets/earth-space/space-research-technology/space-science/heliophysics?utm_campaign=punch-first-light-pr&utm_source=eurekalert!&utm_medium=referral

Image Credits: NASA/Southwest Research Institute

Keywords: Sun, Solar wind, Heliosphere, Cameras, Artificial satellites, Scientific data, Earth systems science, Solar physics