One of Al Gore's dreams is about to become a reality. In 1998, Gore proposed a satellite that would continuously beam down a live image of Earth's illuminated side which would be available on the Internet: just as the famous ‘blue marble’ image of Earth taken by the Apollo 17 crew had inspired people, Gore said, the satellite would “awaken a new generation to the environment and educate millions of children around the globe”.
Formerly known as Triana, DSCOVR, NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory was initially planned in the late 1990s as a NASA Earth science mission that would image Earth in 10 spectral bands and measure how much energy was being reflected and emitted from Earth. Republicans predictably hated the idea at the time, calling it an "expensive screen saver", and it was mothballed -- but seven years later, NOAA and the Air Force worked with NASA to remove DSCOVR from storage so the spacecraft and instruments could be tested to verify their flight readiness. Around the end of this month, the refurbished spacecraft will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9.
DSCOVR will orbit at the L1 Lagrange point -- the point where the Earth's and Sun's gravitational pulls balance. It will monitor the solar wind in real time, which is crucial for advanced warning of geomagnetic storms; particles of the solar wind reach L1 about an hour before they hit the Earth. Geomagnetic storms can affect telecommunications, power grids, aviation, GPS, and the International Space Station.
DSCOVR's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) will provide a continuous image of the Earth in one picture, as Gore envisioned. "Unlike personal cameras, EPIC will take images in 10 very narrow wavelength ranges," said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "Combining these different wavelength images allows the determination of physical quantities like ozone, aerosols, dust and volcanic ash, cloud height, or vegetation cover. These results will be distributed as different publicly available data products allowing their combination with results from other missions."
DSCOVR spacecraft at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center