SWFO-L1

SWFO-L1 [BAE Systems]

SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow-On - L1) is a mission planned by NOAA to provide space weather measurement as a continuation of the DSCOVR mission.

The mission of SWFO-L1 is to establish an operational capability and continuity of space weather observational requirements.

The primary observational objectives are:

• observe Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) parameters, shape density and velocity
• produce CME characteristics for input into operational heliospheric propagation code
• measure solar wind magnetic field, thermal plasma, and energetic particles
• enable space waether watches, warnings, forecasting, and predictions

SWFO-L1 was built on a 3-axis stabilized ESPA class spacecraft. It is to be launched as a rideshare with NASA's IMAP probe in 2024. In June 2020, Ball Aerospace was selected to build the spacecraft.

Following instruments are on board:

• CCOR-2 (NRL) Compact Coronagraph, imaging 3.5 to 26 solar radii with 65 arcsec resolution and a 4 Mpix camera sensitive in the 470-740 nm band.
• SWIPS (SwRI), Solar Wind Plasma Sensor, electrostatic analysers for velocity, density, temperature of low energy ions, 0.2-32 keV/e, and protons at 180-2500 km/s.
• STIS (Berkeley), Suprathermal Ion Sensor, measuring 25 keV - 6 MeV high energy ions
• MAG (UNH/SwRI/), a fluxgate magnetometer measuring 64 mag field vectors per second.