Overview

• A Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 24, deploying NASA’s IMAP as the primary payload alongside NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s SWFO‑L1.
• NASA and NOAA reported successful spacecraft deployments and signal acquisition, with the three missions now cruising about 1 million miles sunward to L1 on a roughly 108‑day trip.
• IMAP will map the heliosphere and study particle acceleration to support earlier radiation alerts for astronauts, carrying ten instruments including two built at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• Carruthers will image Earth’s far‑flung exosphere to track geocorona changes from the L1 viewpoint, offering new insight into how space weather couples to near‑Earth space.
• SWFO‑L1 will deliver continuous, real‑time solar wind and CME data to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center as an operational successor to aging L1 assets, with NASA’s missions targeted for early 2026 operations and SWFO‑L1 expected by spring 2026.