NOAA has started releasing magnetometer measurements from its Space Weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness – 1 (SOLAR-1) observatory to the space weather operational and scientific community through the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Space Weather Portal (SPOT, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cloud-access/space-weather-portal/).
SOLAR-1 was launched on September 24, 2025 as a rideshare with NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and Carruthers Geocoronal Observatory (CGO). Originally known as Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), the mission was renamed SOLAR-1 (https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/our-satellites/future-programs/swfo/space-weather-follow-lagrange-1-swfo-l1) when it reached orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1) on January 23, 2026. Measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) from this mission will extend the historical record based on data from ACE (since 1997) and DSCOVR (declared operational in 2016) and even earlier from ISEE-3 (placed at L1 in 1978-1982) and other missions.
The MAG instrument was built by the University of New Hampshire and Southwest Research Institute team led by Prof. Roy Torbert and based on the institution’s legacy of magnetometers for satellites and sounding rockets. It comprises two fluxgate sensors placed at the end and near the midpoint of a 5.6-m boom (outboard and inboard, resp.). MAG was activated two days after launch and has since provided high-precision IMF measurements with a nominal time resolution of 64 vectors/s and a low rate of 8 vectors/s. Product levels and types are described in the Calibration and Validation Plan available from the SWFO Data Products and Science webpage (https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/our-satellites/future-programs/swfo/swfo-data-products-and-science ) of the office of Space Weather Observations (SWO). In addition to the Level 3 products, which are 1-second and 1-minute averages in the geocentric solar ecliptic (GSE) and magnetospheric (GSM) coordinate systems, NCEI makes available lower-level data products at the original time resolution.
The first public data announcement (https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/noaa-shares-first-space-weather-data-swfo-l1s-magnetometer) featured IMF measurements of the powerful interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) of November 11-12, 2025 leading to a G4 geomagnetic storm (“Veterans Day” event). MAG data products passed NOAA’s provisional-maturity Product Validation Review (PVR) on March 31, 2026. They were declared operationally ready even though the mission is still not operational pending similar reviews of other instruments. On April 20, 2026, NCEI started releasing archived data from April 1 onwards at SPOT. NCEI will gradually reprocess and release earlier data, eventually including those of October 2025. Real-time MAG data will be made available at the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) no earlier than the middle of May.
Points of contact: William Rowland (william.rowland@noaa.gov), NCEI: archived data available at SPOT; Dimitrios Vassiliadis (dimitrios.vassiliadis@noaa.gov), SWO: information on sensor, requests for non-yet published data; Jeff Johnson (jeff.m.johnson@noaa.gov), SWPC: real-time data.