New Delhi: A SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at 17:00 hours IST on Wednesday, 24 September, 2025. On board were three spacecraft dedicated to monitoring space weather produced by the Sun and its influence on the Solar System. The IMAP probe was the primary payload, with the Carruthers Observatory and SWFO-L1 piggybacking on the ride. The flight was nominal with the first stage successfully landing on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions’ stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. The Falcon 9 coasted for 40 minutes before briefly igniting its second stage to precisely inject the three payloads into their intended orbits.
NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will map the boundaries of the heliosphere, a bubble created by solar wind that encapsulates the entire solar system, and examine how the heliosphere interacts with the galactic neighbourhood. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (CGC) will study the outermost layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, or the exosphere, that expands and contracts much like a hot air balloon during solar storms because of the injection of heat. The Carruthers Observatory will monitor the size, density and shape of the exosphere, and its evolution over time. Finally, the Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will make realtime observations of solar wind, improving space weather forecasts.
All three satellites headed to L1
All the three satellites are headed to the first Lagrange Point in the Sun-Earth system, a popular target regime for heliophysics observatories, including ISRO’s Aditya L1. The gravitational stable location towards the Sun allows spacecraft to maintain their positions with minimal expenditure of fuel. IMAP was the first to be deployed, followed by SWFO-L1 and then the Carruther’s Observatory. NASA has confirmed that communications has been established with all the three spacecraft, and that the systems on board are functioning nominally.