NOAA Prepping For Constant Monitoring Of Solar Activity

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On L1 (SWFO-L1) mission is poised to initiate continuous in-space monitoring of the Sun for the first time following its launch next month.

SWFO-L1 will monitor solar activity such as Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) which can disrupt satellite communications and navigation services, endanger astronauts and commercial aircraft, and potentially disrupt ground-based power grids.

SWFO- L1 is planned for launch no earlier than Sept. 23 with NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

SWFO-L1 will be deployed on a $692.8 million, five-year primary mission to Lagrange Point 1 (L-1), a gravitationally stable point about 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth. It features four instruments, including a coronagraph developed to enable observations of the density structure of the Sun’s white-light outer atmosphere for detection of CMEs shortly after they erupt.

Though the Earth is currently experiencing the solar max period of the recurring 11-year cycle of rising and declining solar activity, it has had to rely on aging satellites focused primarily on research rather than monitoring space weather for forecasting hazards like CME encounters.

“For years we have relied on satellites, some which are well past their design lifespans, to give us official warnings about solar storms,” Irene Parker, deputy assistant administrator for systems at the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, told an Aug. 21 prelaunch news briefing.

“These warning are the first line of defense against potentially devastating effects of space weather,” she said. “Imagine a massive surge of energy from the Sun that could overload power grids, knock out GPS, disrupt air travel. These are all of the threats our SWFO-L1 observatory is designed to combat by using proven, continuous, high-quality data. Like an ocean tsunami, it can’t stop an incoming threat, but it can give us time to prepare.”

For three decades, NOAA has relied on a variety of different satellites for space weather information pulled from research data focused on the solar wind and the corona, the Sun’s high-temperature outer atmosphere that generates the solar wind. Those spacecraft include the NESDIS Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and the joint European Space Agency and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Also positioned at L1, each is well past its original design life. “DSCOVR went into safe hold several weeks ago, and we are trying to recover it,” Shawn Dahl, the service coordinator and senior forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told the briefing. “But the need is urgent, and we must replace this capability now.”

With a planned late-September launch, SWFO-L1 should reach its operational orbit and complete commissioning in February.

“Being operational is a game changer for forecasters,” Richard Ullman, deputy director of NOAA’s Office of Space Weather Observations, told the briefing. “CME imagery will now be in the hands of forecasters within 30 minutes compared to up to eight hours from our research partners. In-sight measurements will be available within five minutes. This will be transformative for operational space weather forecasting.”

Although it has a five-year primary mission, SWFO-L1 is launching with onboard consumables for up to 10 years of operations.

Meanwhile, a companion spacecraft with similar capabilities to SWFO-L1 is being prepared by NOAA for launch to L1 in 2029. The European Space Agency is leading the partnered development of the VIGIL spacecraft with a similar, NOAA-provided compact coronagraph that is to launch to Lagrange Point 5 in Earth orbit to provide a stereoscopic view of solar activity.