EPIC Earth View: The Deep Space Climate Observatory (2015-2023) | NOAA/NASA
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Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR): Celebrating The 8-Year Anniversary (2015-2023)
From one million miles away, the DSCOVR satellite returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth in this image from July 2015. The journey has been a long one. Once known as Triana, the satellite was conceived in 1998 to provide continuous views of Earth, to monitor the solar wind, and to measure fluctuations in Earth’s albedo. The mission was put on hold in 2001, and the partly-built satellite ended up in storage for several years with an uncertain future. In 2008, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, and the U.S. Air Force decided to refurbish and update the spacecraft for launch.
On Feb. 11, 2015, DSCOVR was finally lofted into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. After a journey of about 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) to the L1 Lagrange Point, the satellite and its Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth. At L1—four times farther than the orbit of the Moon—the gravitational pull of the Sun and Earth cancel out, providing a stable orbit and a continuous view of Earth. This image was made by combining information from EPIC’s red, green, and blue bands. (Bands are narrow regions of the electromagnetic spectrum to which a remote sensing instrument responds. When EPIC collects data, it takes a series of 10 images at different bands—from ultraviolet to near-infrared.)
This first public image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the disk a characteristic bluish tint. Data from EPIC is used to measure ozone and aerosol levels in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as cloud height, vegetation properties, and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth. NASA will use this data for a number of Earth science applications, including dust and volcanic ash maps of the entire planet.
“This first DSCOVR image of our planet demonstrates the unique and important benefits of Earth observation from space,” said ex-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “As a former astronaut who’s been privileged to view the Earth from orbit, I want everyone to be able to see and appreciate our planet as an integrated, interacting system.”
Image Credit: The DSCOVR EPIC team
Caption Credit: Rob Gutro & Adam Voiland
Image Date: July 6, 2015
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