Ball Aerospace successfully completed critical design review (CDR) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft. Ball will now proceed with production, integration and test of the spacecraft. Expected to launch in 2025, SWFO-L1 will collect solar wind data and coronal imagery to meet NOAA's operational requirements to monitor and forecast impacts from solar storm activity.

Ball Aerospace was selected by NASA to design, build and integrate the small satellite for NOAA's SWFO-L1 mission in partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Ball will also perform satellite-level testing, help train the flight operations team, check-out the satellite in orbit and support mission operations. The SWFO-L1 mission builds on the success of Ball's spacecraft buses designed for operational weather missions like NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP, as well as high-performing small satellite missions like STPSats-2 and 3 and the Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM).