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By NASA
6 Min Read Upcoming Launch to Boost NASA’s Study of Sun’s Influence Across Space
Soon, there will be three new ways to study the Sun’s influence across the solar system with the launch of a trio of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spacecraft. Expected to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23, the missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft.
The three missions will launch together aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From there, the spacecraft will travel together to their destination at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1), around one million miles from Earth toward the Sun.
The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind — the continuous stream of particles emitted by the Sun — and space weather — the changing conditions in space driven by the Sun — from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our solar system. Research and observations from the missions will help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Earth’s habitability, map our home in space, and protect satellites and voyaging astronauts and airline crews from space weather impacts.
The IMAP and Carruthers missions add to NASA’s heliophysics fleet of spacecraft. Together, NASA’s heliophysics missions study a vast, interconnected system from the Sun to the space surrounding Earth and other planets to the farthest limits of the Sun’s constantly flowing streams of solar wind. The SWFO-L1 mission, funded and operated by NOAA, will be the agency’s first satellite designed specifically for and fully dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observations.
Mapping our home in space: IMAP
The IMAP mission will study the heliosphere, our home in space.
NASA/Princeton University/Patrick McPike As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will investigate two of the most important overarching issues in heliophysics: the interaction of the solar wind at its boundary with interstellar space and the energization of charged particles from the Sun.
The IMAP mission will principally study the boundary of our heliosphere — a huge bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our solar system — and study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond. The heliosphere protects the solar system from dangerous high-energy particles called galactic cosmic rays. Mapping the heliosphere’s boundaries helps scientists understand our home in space and how it came to be habitable.
“IMAP will revolutionize our understanding of the outer heliosphere,” said David McComas, IMAP mission principal investigator at Princeton University in New Jersey. “It will give us a very fine picture of what’s going on out there by making measurements that are 30 times more sensitive and at higher resolution than ever before.”
The IMAP mission will also explore and chart the vast range of particles in interplanetary space. The spacecraft will provide near real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions not only in the space environment near Earth, but also on the ground. The mission’s data will help model and improve prediction capabilities of the impacts of space weather ranging from power-line disruptions to loss of satellites.
Imaging Earth’s exosphere: Carruthers Geocorona Observatory
An illustration shows the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory spacecraft. NASA/BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, a small satellite, will launch with IMAP as a rideshare. The mission was named after Dr. George Carruthers, creator of the Moon-based telescope that captured the first images of Earth’s exosphere, the outermost layer of our planet’s atmosphere.
The Carruthers mission will build upon Dr. Carruthers’ legacy by charting changes in Earth’s exosphere. The mission’s vantage point at L1 offers a complete view of the exosphere not visible from the Moon’s relatively close distance to Earth. From there, it will address fundamental questions about the nature of the region, such as its shape, size, density, and how it changes over time.
The exosphere plays an important role in Earth’s response to space weather, which can impact our technology, from satellites in orbit to communications signals in the upper atmosphere or power lines on the ground. During space weather storms, the exosphere mediates the energy absorption and release throughout the near-Earth space environment, influencing strength of space weather disturbances. Carruthers will help us better understand the fundamental physics of our exosphere and improve our ability to predict the impacts of the Sun’s activity.
“We’ll be able to create movies of how this atmospheric layer responds when a solar storm hits, and watch it change with the seasons over time,” said Lara Waldrop, the principal investigator for the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
New space weather station: SWFO-L1
SWFO-L1 will provide real-time observations of the Sun’s corona and solar wind to help forecast the resulting space weather.
NOAA/BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Distinct from NASA’s research satellites, SWFO-L1 will be an operational satellite, designed to observe solar activity and the solar wind in real time to provide critical data in NOAA’s mission to protect the nation from environmental hazards. SWFO-L1 will serve as an early-warning beacon for potentially damaging space weather events that could impact our technology on Earth. SWFO-L1 will observe 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.
This mission is the first of a new generation of NOAA space weather observatories dedicated to 24/7 operations, working to avoid gaps in continuity.
“SWFO-L1 will be an amazing deep-space mission for NOAA,” said Dimitrios Vassiliadis, SWFO program scientist at NOAA. “Thanks to its advantageous location at L1, it will continuously monitor the solar atmosphere while measuring the solar wind and its interplanetary magnetic fields well before it impacts Earth — and transmit these data in record time.”
With SWFO-L1’s enhanced performance, unobstructed views, and minimal delay between observations and data return, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center forecasters will give operators improved lead time required to take precautionary actions that protect vital infrastructure, economic interests, and national security on Earth and in space.
By Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 04, 2025 Related Terms
Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (GLIDE) Heliophysics Heliosphere IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Solar Wind Space Weather The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Explore More
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By European Space Agency
Southern Europe is once again in the grip of extreme summer heat. Soaring temperatures and bone-dry land have fuelled widespread wildfires, with the Iberian Peninsula among the regions hardest hit. Flames continue to sweep across parched landscapes, as these images show.
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By European Space Agency
Image: Copernicus Sentinel-2 captured wildfires burning in northern Portugal on Wednesday, 30 July. View the full article
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Earth Science GLOBE-Trotting Science Lands… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 2 min read
GLOBE-Trotting Science Lands in Chesapeake with NASA eClips
On June 16-17, 2025, 50 students at Camp Young in Chesapeake, Virginia traded their usual summer routines for microscopes. The NASA eClips team from the National Institute of Aerospace Center for Integrative STEM Education (NIA-CISE) taught two engaging lessons focused on macroinvertebrates and plankton, with a surprising star of the show – mosquitoes!
Camp Young, a Title I camp program serving students from Norfolk Public Schools, provides year-round, environmental science-based learning. The NASA eClips’ visit reinforced their mission to help students explore their environment on the Elizabeth River while seeing its place in the Earth System.
The lessons, designed for students in grades 3 through 8, were inspired by NASA’s GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) program, which encourages people around the world to collect and share environmental data as ‘citizen scientists’. This is where mosquitos stole the show! The lesson focuses on how these tiny insects can serve as indicators of climate and habitat change. By identifying mosquito larvae and understanding their breeding environments, students contributed to the bigger picture of global health and environmental monitoring, right from their own backyard.
During this experience, Camp Young’s stunning waterfront on the Elizabeth River was turned into a living laboratory. With phytoplankton nets, petri dishes, and sample jars in hand, campers ventured into the field to collect real environmental data, bringing their findings back to a cabin-turned-classroom to analyze them with scientific tools, including microscopes provided by the NASA eClips team.
Rather than just reading about ecosystems and the kinds of scientific questions that arise within them, students got to experience them firsthand and experience real science in the field. “It’s one thing to talk about microscopic marine organisms,” one instructor noted, “but it’s another thing entirely when students can actually see them swimming in a droplet from the river.”
The NASA eClips project provides educators with standards-based videos, activities, and lessons to increase STEM literacy through the lens of NASA. It is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB91A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
A student collects a stagnant water sample, looking for mosquito eggs and larvae. Share
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Last Updated Jul 21, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By USH
These images captured by the Curiosity rover in 2014 reveals yet another unexplained aerial phenomenon in the Martian atmosphere, a cigar-shaped object with a consistent width and rounded ends.
What makes this anomaly particularly compelling is the sharp clarity of the image. According to Jean Ward the stars in the background appear crisp and unblurred, indicating that the object is not the result of motion blur or a long exposure. Notably, the object appears in five separate frames over an 8-minute span, suggesting it is moving relatively slowly through space, uncharacteristic of a meteorite entering the atmosphere. It also lacks the fiery tail typically associated with atmospheric entry.
Rather than a meteor, the object more closely resembles a solid, elongated craft of unknown origin. When oriented horizontally, it even appears to feature a front-facing structure, possibly a porthole or raised dome, hinting at a cockpit or command module.
Whether this object is orbiting beyond the visible horizon or connected to the surface far in the distance, its sheer size is unmistakable. Its presence raises compelling questions, could this be further evidence of intelligently controlled craft, whether of extraterrestrial or covert human origin, navigating through Martian airspace?View the full article
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