NOAA's New Solar Weather Sentry: SWFO-L1

NASA and SpaceX are preparing to launch a rideshare mission with a trio of spacecraft designed to study the impacts of the Sun on the Earth. The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

One of the three spacecraft is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1). It's the first satellite from NOAA that is purpose built to monitor impacts to the Earth, like solar winds and coronal mass ejections and offer an earlier warning system to safeguard against the effects of those solar events.

It's equipped with four main instruments that it will use over a minimum five-year mission at the Sun-Earth Lagrange 1 (L1) point:

• Compact Coronagraph (CCOR)
• Magnetometer (MAG)
• Solar Wind Plasma Sensor (SWiPS)
• SupraThermal Ion Sensor (STIS)

SWFO-L1 is a secondary rideshare mission alongside NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP).

Video shot by: John Pisani, Will Robinson-Smith
Edited by: Will Robinson-Smith

Additional video: NASA, NOAA

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