Signal Acquired for Space Weather Spacecraft
Mission managers successfully received acquisition of signal from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.
The spacecraft is the first NOAA satellite designed specifically for and fully dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observations.
The SWFO-L1 satellite will monitor the Sun’s outer atmosphere for large eruptions, called coronal mass ejections, and measure the solar wind upstream from Earth with a state-of-the-art suite of instruments and processing system. The data will provide early warnings for destructive space weather events that could impact our technological dependent infrastructure and industries.
The observatory is expected to reach Lagrange point 1 in January 2026, which is nearly a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. It will complete commissioning in mid-2026 and transition to the satellite’s operational phase. NOAA and NASA have important and complementary responsibilities in the development, testing, launch, and operation of SWFO-L1. NOAA is the program owner that determines the requirements, provides funds, and manages the program, operations, and data products and dissemination to users. NASA and commercial partners develop, build, and test the instruments and spacecraft on NOAA’s behalf and to NOAA’s specifications. As SWFO-L1 is a rideshare with NASA’s IMAP mission, NOAA did not incur launch vehicle procurement costs. NASA’s Heliophysics Division funded the launch vehicle as part of IMAP and supported the rideshare integration effort. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for managing the launch service.
