Carruthers Geocorona Observatory

The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, previously called Global Lyman-alpha Imagers of the Dynamic Exosphere (GLIDE), is a NASA mission led by the University of Illinois, which will survey ultraviolet light emitted by Earth's outermost atmospheric layer, the exosphere, and geocorona.^[1][2]

Carruthers Geocorona Observatory

A BAE systems technician inspecting the fully assembled Carruthers Geocorona Observatory
Mission type	Space telescope
Operator	NASA
Website	https://science.nasa.gov/mission/carruthers-geocorona-observatory/
Start of mission
Launch date	24 September 24 2025, 11:30 UTC
Rocket	Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site	Kennedy, LC-39A
Contractor	SpaceX
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric orbit
Regime	L1

Name

The mission name was given to honour George R. Carruthers, a pioneer American space physicist, engineer, and inventor. He is widely recognised for his groundbreaking contributions to ultraviolet astronomy. His most famous invention was the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph,^[3] a compact but powerful telescope that was placed by the astronauts of Apollo 16 on the Moon in 1972.^[4]

Launch

NOAA's SWFO-L1, along with NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory fully integrated for launch

Carruthers Geocorona Observatory was launched as a secondary payload on the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle carrying NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft, together with NOAA's SWFO-L1, on 24 September 2025.^[5][6][7]

See also

• List of objects at Lagrange points