The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded Ball Aerospace a contract worth US$96.9 million to build and operate the SWFO (Space Weather Follow-On) spacecraft to study the solar wind and provide early warning of Coronal Mass Ejection events on the Sun. The SWFO spacecraft is set to be launched in late 2024 alongside the IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) on its way to its halo orbit around the L1 (Lagrangian 1) position on the Earth Sun line. As well as a magnetometer, the spacecraft will carry a Compact Coronagraph supplied by the US Naval Research Laboratory and a Supra Thermal Ion Sensor provided by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory.
