LAUNCH OF IMAP, SWFO, and CARRUTHERS GEOCORONA OBSERVATORY, Sept 24, 2025, KSC, 7:30 am ET

Update, September 22: The launch has been postponed a day “to allow more time for recovery assets to arrive at the landing zone.”  It is now set for Wednesday, September 24, at 7:30 am ET (two minutes earlier than before).

🚀LAUNCH UPDATE:

NASA and SpaceX are now targeting 7:30 a.m. EDT, Wednesday Sept. 24 for the launch of IMAP, SWFO-L1, and Carruthers to allow more time for recovery assets to arrive at the landing zone. All three spacecraft and the rocket remain healthy.https://t.co/o1RqgGg29T pic.twitter.com/VdNLuQnxIg

— NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) September 22, 2025

Original Entry: NASA will launch a trio of satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on September 23, 2025 all of which are headed to the Lagrange-1 (L1) point 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away, between the Earth and the Sun.   The launch time was not announced in the August 21 press release, but NASA later said it is 7:32 am ET and will be livestreamed on NASA+ and NASA’s social media outlets.

• NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, IMAP, will study and map Earth’s heliosphere, “a vast magnetic bubble surrounding the Sun protecting our solar system from radiation incoming from interstellar space.”

The other two are rideshares.

• NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will study the exosphere.  “The exosphere, a cloud of neutral hydrogen extending to the Moon and possibly beyond, is created by the breakdown of water and methane by ultraviolet light from the Sun, and its glow, known as the geocorona, has been observed globally only four times before this mission.”
• NOAA’s Space Weather Follow on-Lagrange -1 (SWFO-L1) “will use a suite of instruments to provide real-time measurements of solar wind, along with a compact coronagraph to detect coronal mass ejections from the Sun. The observatory, serving as an early warning beacon for potentially destructive space weather events, will enable faster and more accurate forecasts.”