SOLAR-1 Quick Facts
Final Orbit and Rename
On January 23, 2026, NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On - Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory executed its final engine burn, successfully entering its final orbital position at Lagrange point 1. Located roughly one million miles from Earth, this unique vantage point allows the satellite to continuously monitor the sun and space weather before it reaches our planet. The observatory has now been officially renamed to Space weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness - 1 (SOLAR-1).
Scheduled Launch Date and Location
SOLAR-1, then known as SWFO-L1, successfully launched on September 24, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
SOLAR-1 is a critical operational mission that launched as a secondary rideshare alongside NASA’s research missions: the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which was the primary payload, and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory.
Mission
Monitor space weather from the Sun-Earth line at L1 for 24/7 operations to help protect critical infrastructure, the economy, and national security. By detecting solar storms in advance, the observatory will serve as an early warning beacon for potentially disruptive space weather events.
Spacecraft
Bus designed for operational space weather missions by BAE Systems
Launch Vehicle
SpaceX Falcon 9
Primary Instruments
Solar Wind Plasma Sensor (SWiPS), SupraThermal Ion Sensor (STIS), Magnetometer (MAG), and Compact Coronagraph (CCOR)
Orbit
Lagrange Point 1 – approximately one million miles from Earth.
Primary Measurements
Solar wind, thermal plasma, the magnetic field, and detection of coronal mass ejections.
Observational Mitigation. An Urgent Need for Critical Continuity
SOLAR-1 is the first of a next generation of observatories to replace space weather monitoring for operations at Lagrange Point 1. This fills a continuity gap that allows for the decommissioning of aging legacy satellites, that are operating beyond intended design life and with limited remaining resources (e.g. fuel depletion):
- ESA-NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) launched in 1995
- NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) launched in 1997
- NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) launched in 2015
Benefits
The SOLAR-1 observatory is the first U.S. satellite designed specifically for and fully dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observations.
SOLAR-1 will monitor solar eruptions and serve as an early warning beacon for destructive space weather events that could impact our technologically dependent infrastructure and industries.
The SOLAR-1 observatory will constantly stream data down to Earth without interruption and obstruction, offering improved performance over older instruments and faster delivery of observations to NOAA's National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).
Media Contact
Monica Allen
202-379-6693
NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service
Silver Spring, MD
