SWFO-L1 successfully launched at 7:32am EDT on Wednesday, 24 September, 2025!
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, and will be used by SWPC to notify these sectors with advanced and timely notice.
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.