Establishing Continuity of NOAA’s Operational Space Weather Observations from the Sun-Earth Lagrange 1 Point

The Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act integrates national space weather activities and codifies and strengthens efforts toward a whole community approach for enhancing American preparedness for and resilience to the effects of space weather. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is implementing the PROSWIFT Act by fulfilling existing program responsibilities and data continuity requirements, as well as standing up new programs to advance critical operational space weather capabilities. Furthermore, NOAA is developing partnerships and leveraging resources across the space weather community to deliver space weather data, products, and services to users. In recognition of the emerging needs for implementing the PROSWIFT Act, NOAA established the Office of Space Weather Observations (SWO) to sustain and advance agency’s space-based space weather observational capabilities.

SWO is currently developing the Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO) mission to Lagrange 1 (L1) point, planned for launch in 2025 as a rideshare. It will serve as NOAA's first space weather dedicated observatory, to succeed NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory. In parallel, SWO is embarking on implementing the Space Weather Next (SW Next) program that will provide continuity of space weather observations from L1 and Geosynchronous orbits, as well as other relevant orbits. The SW Next program developed its reference space architecture and concept for the collection of data to meet its observational requirements. The program is currently formulating the SW Next-L1 project that will provide continuity of observations beyond SWFO. The project will consist of two observatories that are near-derivative of SWFO-L1. The first SW Next-L1 mission (L1-A) is planned to be launched as primary payload in 2028 and the second SW Next-L1 mission (L1-B) is expected to be launched in 2031. In this presentation, we will describe observational requirements from the L1 vantage point to support different space weather products and services. We will present the notional SW Next architecture and discuss the status of SW Next L1-A observatory development.