Dscovr - Blog Posts
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
The solar system is vast, and exploring it requires not one expedition, but many. From the sun to the Earth to the depths of space beyond Pluto, an entire fleet of spacecraft is pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. Scientists and engineers around the world work together on dozens of missions, and the results of their work unfold on a daily basis. During any given week, astronauts and robotic spacecraft return thousands of pictures and other data from Earth orbit and from half a dozen other worlds.
The result? It’s nothing short of a visual and intellectual feast. For example, all of the following images were obtained over the course of one week during January this year.
The same missions that took these pictures are still at work – they may be photographing Saturn or transmitting a report from Mars as you read this.
1. The Sun
From its clear vantage point in Earth orbit, our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observes our nearby star almost continuously. This image shows activity on the sun’s surface on Jan. 18. You can also get similar pictures from SDO daily!
2. The Earth from Afar
The DSCOVR satellite orbits the Earth at a distance of nearly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers). It’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) keeps a steady watch on the home planet. This is how the world turned on Jan. 20. Get the latest daily images from EPIC HERE.
3. Mars from Above
The team that manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently celebrated a decade of observing the Red Planet. MRO took this detailed look at dunes and rocky buttes in Danielson Crater on Jan. 24. It was 3:06 p.m., local Mars time. On the right stide of the image, dust devils have left tracks in the sand.
4. Comet 67/P
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe caught this look at the surface of Comet 67/P from a distance of just 46 miles (75 kilometers) on Jan. 23.
5. Saturn
On the same day (Jan. 23), our Cassini spacecraft continued its odyssey of nearly two decades in space, bringing us this look at the sixth planet. See the latest images from Cassini HERE.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
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Great Scott, it’s Back to the Future Day – Oct. 21, 2015
What would a time traveler from 1985 discover about NASA today?
It’s Back to the Future Day, the date in the second film that Marty and Doc traveled to in the future. When they arrived in 2015, it looked much different than today’s reality. Although we may not have self-drying jackets or flying cars, we do have some amazing spacecraft and technologies that were not around back when the film was made.
For example, in 1985 we did not have the capability to capture an image like this of our Earth. This full-Earth view captured Monday (10/19/15) by our camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVER, was not previously possible. The DSCOVR mission captures a daily sequence of images that show the Earth as it rotates, revealing the whole globe over the course of a day. These images will allow scientists to study daily variations over the entire globe in such features as vegetation, ozone, aerosols and cloud height and reflectivity.
So, we might not be cruising down the street on hover boards, but the movies didn’t get it all wrong in terms of how advanced we’d be in 2015.
When you were a kid, what technologies did you dream we’d have in the future that we may or may not have today? Here’s what two astronauts said:
NASA is much different than it was in 1985. Could we have dreamed these amazing accomplishments that have changed our world and understanding of the universe?
1. “There will be an orbiting laboratory where astronauts from around the world will live and work together.”
When Back to the Future II was set, the International Space Station didn’t exist yet. The first piece of the space station was launched in 1998, and the first crew arrived in 2000. Since November 2000, the station has been continuously occupied by humans.
2. "We will find planets orbiting in the habitable zone of a star, and possibly suited for life."
The first exoplanet, or planet orbiting around a star, was found in 1995. Since then, we’ve discovered around a dozen habitable zone planets in the Earth-size range. While we aren’t able to zoom in to these planets that are light-years away, we’re still closer to finding another Earth-like planet in 2015 than we were in 1985.
3. “Mars will become more populated.”
No, not by humans...yet. But, since the release of Back to the Future II, Mars has become a bit more populated with rovers and orbiters. These scientific spacecraft have played an important role in learning about the Red Planet. We currently have six missions at Mars. With the most recent news of liquid water on the surface of Mars, we can look forward to future missions returning even more data and images. The historical log of all Mars missions, both domestic and international can be found HERE.
4. “We will launch a telescope into orbit that’s capable of looking at locations more than 13.4 billion light years from Earth.”
When Back to the Future II was released, our Hubble Space Telescope had not yet launched into orbit -- something that wouldn’t happen until April 1990. Since then, Hubble has made more than 1.2 million observations, and has traveled more than 3 billion miles along a circular low Earth orbit. For updates on Hubble’s findings, check HERE.
For more information about the technology that we’re developing at NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology
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Incredible “EPIC” View Of The Moon Passing In Front Of The Earth
This is real, folks. It is not a computer-generated animation. NASA’s DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite took these incredible shots on July 16 using its Earth-facing EPIC camera from its vantage point between the Earth and the Sun, a million miles away!
DSCOVR sits at what’s known as the L1 Lagrangian point, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun balance out in such a way that satellites positioned there can remain in stable orbit while using minimal energy:
Image: NASA/NOAA
This view of the far side of the Moon reminds us that it is anything but dark. The Moon is tidally locked, meaning that we see the same face all the time, but the sun regularly shines on the side that we don’t see (we’re just seeing a new or crescent moon when that happens). The far side also lacks the dark plains, or maria, that texture the Earth-facing side, made of basalt laid down by ancient lunar lava flows, reminding us that our lunar satellite has a complex geologic history:
Pretty cool to see something like this from the "other angle!" "See what #Eclipse2016 looked like from space. As seen by #DSCOVR Earth observation satellite. http://bbc.in/solareclipse"
An EPIC View of Earth
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”
Carl Sagan wrote those words in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision For The Human Future In Space. His now-famous ode to our home planet (listen to the full passage here, in animated form) is perhaps our most poignant and humble reminder of the exquisite beauty and shared fragility of this planet we call home.
NASA is now bringing us a daily reminder of that message, thanks to the EPIC camera (a very appropriately named camera, in my opinion) on board NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. You can see some of its handiwork in the image sequence above.
DSCOVR’s official space job is to observe weather on and around the sun, to extend its mechanical finger into the solar wind and measure how strongly that stream of charged particles is gusting toward Earth. It does this job from a special spot in space called the L1 Lagrange point. If you were to draw a line between us and the sun, DSCOVR would be sitting along it, like so (not to scale):
That’s a convenient place to put a spacecraft, especially one whose job it is to stare at the sun. See, DSCOVR is nestled inside a pocket where it’s tugged equally by the Earth’s and Sun’s gravity, like a stalemate in an orbital game of tug-o-war. Gravity does all the work, and the spacecraft doesn’t need to maneuver much to stay in position. There’s a few of these gravity-neutral Lagrange points out there, as you can tell in the image above, and we’ve got spacecraft residing at all of them.
As a side effect of its sun-staring mission, DSCOVR’s backside happens to be looking back at Earth full-time. In a way, I think that makes it a different sort of moon.
NASA doesn’t like to let any opportunity go un-scienced, of course, so they decided to slap a camera on DSCOVR’s rear, the one named EPIC, and use their stable perch to keep a regular eye on us. Good lookin’ out, NASA.
A little change in perspective can do a planet good. In 1990, from a vantage point beyond Pluto, Voyager 1 turned its cameras back toward home to take one last look, giving us the image that inspired Carl Sagan’s ode to ol’ Dotty Blue:
This was not an easy shot to take. Voyager’s camera wasn’t the fancy digital type like most of us have in our phones. It was essentially an old-fashioned black and white tube TV in reverse, relying on colored filters held in front of the camera to highlight different wavelengths of light. Voyager stored its image data on magnetic tape, and each of the shots took more than five hours to reach Earth. Sagan and NASA’s planetary science team had to practically move the heavens (since they were unable to move the Earth) in order to take that picture.
Now consider the effect this picture has had. That’s home. That’s us. Even if you weren’t born in 1990, everyone and everything that made you is in and on that hazy blue speck. I hope you never lose sight of how amazing it is to view our planet from this perspective.
Luckily, you can get a reminder every day. The DSCOVR satellite is now sending roughly a picture an hour back to Earth, 24/7/365. That’s a near real-time view of our home. Go take a look. It’s pretty epic.
To see a daily look at what a day on Earth looks like, check out EPIC’s daily updates here.