How the Earth looks from a million miles away

A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles – 1.6 million kilometres – away.

The image shows North and Central America. The observatory will provide a daily series of Earth images to help in the study of daily climate variations over the entire globe.

The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Air Force, is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

The mission’s website is here and previous Cosmos coverage of the project here – New eye in the sky: DSCOVR to watch over Earth and Sun.

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