Space Weather Follow-On L1


Space Weather Follow-On L1 is a future spacecraft mission purposed for monitoring signs of solar storms, which may pose harm to Earth's telecommunication network. The spacecraft will be operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a nominal launch schedule of 2024. It is planned to be placed at the Sun–Earth Lagrangian point, a location between the Earth and the Sun. This allows SWFO-L1 to continuously watch solar winds and energetic particles heading for Earth. SWFO-L1 is an ESPA Class Spacecraft, sized to be fitted around an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter Grande ring while placed on a rocket. The spacecraft's Solar Wind Instrument Suite which includes three instruments will monitor solar wind, and the Compact Coronagraph will monitor the Sun's surroundings to image coronal mass ejection. A CME is a large outburst of plasma sent from the Sun towards interplanetary space.
Together with space weather observation capabilities on the Earth-orbiting GOES-U satellite, SWFO-L1 constitutes the space segment of NOAA's Space Weather Follow-On program. The aim of the SWFO program is to ensure a robust continuity in space-based measurement of critical space weather environments. Of the spacecraft located in currently monitoring CME and solar wind, the Advanced Composition Explorer is expected to consume its remaining propellant around 2024, and the ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory will cease operation before the mid-2020s. SWFO-L1 SWIS instruments will succeed ACE's monitoring of solar wind and energetic particles, while CCOR will succeed from SOHO's LASCO instrument imaging of CMEs.

Instruments

In April 2020, Southwest Research Institute was awarded a contract to supply SWFO-L1 magnetometer instrument.

Launch

Space Weather Follow-On L1 is planned to be launched as a secondary payload on the rocket carrying NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe spacecraft. The launch service provider has yet to be selected. As of 2019, launch is scheduled for October 2024.