The company designed and built both spacecraft to equip scientists and forecasters with new instruments to study the Sun’s effects. The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will focus on the Earth’s exosphere, while SWFO-L1 will monitor space weather and its potential impacts.
“Through the launch of both the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and SWFO-L1 we will enhance our understanding of the Sun, the Earth’s exosphere and how space weather can impact our lives,” said Bonnie Patterson, vice president and general manager of Civil Space for BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems. “We are proud to support the missions of NASA and NOAA and the next generation science programs that these space weather missions will enable.”
The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory is the first heliophysics mission to study the Sun’s influence on the exosphere during quiet and active solar periods. It aims to provide answers on its size, density, shape and response to energy spikes caused by intense solar storms.
SWFO-L1 will monitor coronal mass ejections and measure solar wind, providing continuous data and early warnings of potentially disruptive space weather events. This capability will be critical in protecting infrastructure on Earth and in space.
Both spacecraft were developed on BAE Systems’ Evolve platform, which uses a common bus and standard payload interfaces to reduce cost and delivery time. They successfully passed design, test and build phases using commercial best practices, with BAE Systems also providing training for flight operations teams and ongoing mission support.
The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory is a collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with Dr Lara Waldrop as principal investigator, alongside the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The SWFO-L1 mission is managed by NOAA and developed with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and commercial partners, with both spacecraft launched as rideshares alongside NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP).
