The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a joint mission between NOAA, NASA, and U.S. Air Force, has captured its first image of Earth.
Earth as seen on July 6, 2015 from a distance of one million miles by NASA’s EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite. Image credit: NOAA / NASA / U.S. Air Force.
Launched in February 2015, the DSCOVR satellite recently reached its planned orbit at the first Lagrange point or L1, about one million miles from Earth toward the Sun.
The primary objective of the mission is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities.
“DSCOVR’s observations of Earth, as well as its measurements and early warnings of space weather events caused by the Sun, will help every person to monitor the ever-changing Earth, and to understand how our planet fits into its neighborhood in the Solar System,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.
This image of our planet was taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the DSCOVR satellite.
“This first DSCOVR image of our planet demonstrates the unique and important benefits of Earth observation from space,” Bolden said.
“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,” he added.
DSCOVR’s EPIC camera takes a series of ten images using different narrowband filters – from UV to near IR – to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these images.
This Earth image was taken July 6, 2015, showing North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands.
The image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint.
“The high quality of the EPIC images exceeded all of our expectations in resolution. The images clearly show desert sand structures, river systems and complex cloud patterns. There will be a huge wealth of new data for scientists to explore,” said Dr Adam Szabo of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, a scientist for the DSCOVR mission.
