NASA’s satellite Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is now circa 1,6 million kilometers Earth since it was launched about five months ago and this is the first photo it has taken off the Earth.

The DSCOVR was actually originally developed as a NASA satellite proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore for the purpose of Earth observation. It will monitor a whole bunch of different variables correlated with climate, weather and environmental aspects. It will measure solar wind conditions and provide early warning of approaching coronal mass ejections. It will observe changes in the ozone layer, aerosols, dust and volcanic ash, cloud height, vegetation cover and the climate.

This photo of Earth was taken with the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is a four-megapixel camera with mounted with a telescope. The camera takes ten shots in each series with different filters, from ultraviolet to infrared, and the picture we see above is a combination of images taken simultaneously with the red, green, and blue filters (RGB) which results in something that very much resembles an ordinary photo.

For more info on DSCOVR, hit the link below.

_________________
NASA Captures “EPIC” Earth Image
__________________________________