The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Compact Coronagraph-2 launched at 7:30 a.m. EDT on September 24 as the primary instrument on NOAA's Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 observatory from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for a Lissajous orbit around L1.

Upon commissioning at L1, the spacecraft will be renamed Space weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness 1, or SOLAR-1, reflecting its continuous role in upstream monitoring of the solar wind and the Sun's corona to improve warning times for geomagnetic storms affecting Earth.

CCOR-2 advances coronagraph design with a single external occulter that blocks direct sunlight to create an artificial eclipse, enabling high-contrast imaging of the solar corona. The instrument increases sensitivity near the solar limb and expan

See Full Page