SWFO-L1 Press Kit

Resources

Fact Sheets

• SWFO-L1 Benefits
   
• NOAA Office of Space Weather Observations Overview

Instrument Information

• SWFO Instruments

Images

• NOAA SWFO-L1 Observatory Flickr Album
   

• NOAA SWFO-L1 Road to Launch Flickr Album
   

• SWFO-L1 Spacecraft Renderings Flickr Album
   

• Space Weather Affects

Videos

• NOAA’s SWFO-L1: Official Mission Trailer
   

• NASA SVS: Space Weather and NOAA's SWFO-L1
   

• SWFO-L1 NOAA’s First Satellite Dedicated to Space Weather Observations
   

• SWFO Kids: Meet SWFO-L1: NOAA’s Eye on the Sun
   

• NOAA’s Compact Coronagraph (CCOR): A Sneak Peak into the Future of Space Weather
   

• NOAA's Compact Coronagraph (CCOR): Transforming Space Weather Forecasts
   

• 5 Things: Space Weather

Partner Sites

• NASA SD/SWFO-L1
   

• BAE Systems/SWFO-L1
   

• NOAA ‘s Space Weather Prediction Center 

Media Contacts

John Jones-Bateman
202-242-0929
NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service
john.jones-bateman@noaa.gov
Silver Spring, MD.

Abbey Interrante 
301-201-0124
Heliophysics Public Affairs Officer/NASA Headquarters
abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov
Washington, DC.

Leejay Lockhart 
321-747-8310 
Office of Communications Public Affairs Officer/ NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center
leejay.lockhart@nasa.gov 
Merritt Island, FL.

Sarah Frazier
202-853-7191
Heliophysics Communications Manager/NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
Lanham, MD

SWFO-L1 Quick Facts

Scheduled Launch Date and Location

The SWFO-L1 mission is scheduled for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than September 23, 2025, from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch window allows for a second attempt the next day.

SWFO-L1 is a critical operational mission that will launch as a secondary rideshare alongside NASA’s research missions: the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which is 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

SWFO-L1 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 SWFO-L1 observatory is the first NOAA satellite designed specifically for and fully dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observations. 

SWFO-L1 will monitor solar eruptions and serve as an early warning beacon for destructive space weather events that could impact our technological dependent infrastructure and industries.

The SWFO-L1 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).