Watching Earth from a Million Miles Away

DSCOVR will eventually replace NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) research satellite as America’s primary warning system for solar magnetic storms headed towards Earth. ACE will continue to provide valuable research data to the science community.

In addition to space weather-monitoring instruments, DSCOVR is carrying two NASA Earth-observing instruments that will gather a range of measurements from ozone and aerosol amounts, to changes in Earth’s radiation budget–the balance between incoming radiation (largely from the sun) and that which is reflected from Earth. This balance affects our climate.

“DSCOVR has reached its final orbit and will soon be ready to begin its mission of space weather monitoring for NOAA and Earth observing for NASA,” said Al Vernacchio, DSCOVR project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

The DSCOVR mission is a partnership between NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force provided the Space X Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the mission. NOAA will operate DSCOVR from its NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and process the space weather data at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado, one of NOAA’s nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction. SWPC will distribute these data to users within the United States and around the world. The data will be archived at NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information: http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/

DSCOVR also hosts NASA-funded secondary sensors for Earth and space science observations. The Earth science data will be processed at NASA’s DSCOVR Science Operations Center and archived and distributed by NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center.