The Carruthers mission is surveying the Earth’s exosphere – the outermost layer of the atmosphere – to determine the Sun’s influence both during quiet solar periods and times of intense solar activity.
Intense solar activity can heat up Earth’s atmosphere, causing increased drag and loss of altitude and lifespan for satellites in low-Earth orbit, causing severe damage to critical national assets and infrastructure. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (Carruthers) is the first heliophysics mission to survey the exosphere – the outermost layer of the atmosphere – to determine the Sun’s influence on the Earth’s exosphere both during quiet solar periods and times of intense solar activity.
The mission comes as part of a collaboration between NASA and the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which developed the primary scientific instrument with support from Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory and the Liège Space Center. Led by Principal Investigator Dr. Lara Waldrop, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Carruthers is planned to launch alongside NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) no earlier than September 2025. In addition to Carruthers, BAE Systems also built the spacecraft bus for SWFO-L1.
What We're Doing
We were responsible for designing and building the Carruthers spacecraft bus, which is built on the BAE Systems Evolve spacecraft platform. In addition, BAE Systems performed satellite-level testing and integration of the observatory.
Evolve solutions provide custom spacecraft configured from proven modular building blocks in single or dual string options across a range of sizes and capabilities to meet the most complex performance requirements and mission needs. We successfully executed Carruthers with best-in-class cost control, leveraging commercial efficiencies – ultimately delivery the best value to the government.
Carruthers and SWFO-L1 will operate at L1, a gravitationally stable orbit point between the Earth and Sun about 1 million miles away, demonstrating the high capability of our Evolve spacecraft platform to withstand the harsh environments of space. Carruthers will be the first spacecraft to provide continuous observations of the Earth’s exosphere.