The SOLAR-1 mission will monitor solar storms and serve as an early warning beacon for destructive space weather events.
Space Weather Observations at L1 for Advanced Readiness (SOLAR-1) Extreme space weather events can cause severe damage to critical national assets and infrastructure, from GPS satellites to the power grid, resulting in significant economic impacts. Ushering in a new generation of space weather observing spacecraft, the Space Weather Observations at L1 for Advanced Readiness – 1 (SOLAR-1) mission (formerly known as the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1)) is NOAA’s first dedicated spacecraft that will enable continuous, low-latency, high-availability, high-accuracy space weather observations to provide warnings and alerts to protect our critical infrastructure on Earth, in space and advance our scientific understanding of space weather and its effects. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) uses data from SOLAR-1 to generate space weather forecasts, alerts and warnings to the public. The mission provides the nation with critical remote sensing and in situ observations to assess the space weather environment and provides early warning of damaging space weather events to protect critical national infrastructure and space-based assets.
The SOLAR-1 spacecraft went through extensive observatory level testing to ensure it can withstand the harsh environment of space and safely operate about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth on the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1. SOLAR-1 is collecting solar wind data and coronal imagery to meet NOAA’s operational requirements to monitor and forecast impacts from solar storm activity.
SOLAR-1 launched successfully alongside NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory in September 2025. In addition to SOLAR-1, BAE Systems also built the spacecraft bus for Carruthers.
What We're Doing
We were selected by NASA to design, build and integrate the high-performing small spacecraft bus for NOAA’s SWFO-L1 mission, renamed SOLAR-1 upon operation, in partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. BAE Systems, Inc. also performed satellite-level testing and has trained the flight operations teams and will support mission operations.
SOLAR-1 utilizes the BAE Systems Evolve spacecraft platform, which successfully met and exceeded the magnetic cleanliness requirements needed to ensure the spacecraft does not interfere with the accurate measurement of space weather for the SOLAR-1 mission. SOLAR-1’s data will serve forecasting models to protect the nation’s ground and space-based infrastructure. Despite its small size, SOLAR-1 will host four payloads to support NOAA’s operational space weather mission, demonstrating the adaptability and high capability of the Evolve platform.
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 SOLAR-1 under a firm-fixed-price contract delivering the best value to the government.
In February 2025, we were selected to build the spacecraft for NOAA’s SOLAR-A and SOLAR-B observatories, the successors to SOLAR-1.