Carruthers Geocorona Observatory reaches planned L1 halo orbit

NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory has reached its target orbit, positioning the spacecraft to capture the first repeated observations of the ultraviolet glow from Earth’s outer atmosphere, the geocorona. The achievement was confirmed following its third and final orbital maneuver, a two-minute thruster fire on Jan.

8, and the spacecraft has entered its intended halo orbit around the Sun–Earth L1 Lagrange point roughly 1 million miles from Earth. The loveseat-sized spacecraft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 24, 2025. Since launch, the Carruthers team has been testing the spacecraft’s instruments, capturing its "first light" images, and adjusting its course as it approached L1.

Carruthers carries two cameras, a wide-field imager and a narrow-field imager, intended to capture the most detailed images ever taken of Earth’s geocorona. The mission was named in honor of Dr. George R. Carruthers, whose ultraviolet camera placed on the Moon by Apollo 16 captured the first images of the geocorona in 1972.

The mission is led by Dr. Lara Waldrop of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with mission implementation and operations, and payload design led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley in collaboration with Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory.

Key Topics

Science, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, Geocorona, Lara Waldrop, Space Sciences Laboratory, Bae Systems