NASA releases a year-long look at the sunlit face of the Earth
In the past, only astronauts had the opportunity to see it.
The DSCOVR satellite gave us a rare glimpse of the sunlit face of the Earth in 2015. Now that it's been orbiting the planet for over a year, its EPIC camera has finally captured enough images for a year-long time-lapse video of our home. In the past, you had to be an astronaut to get a look at the side of the Earth that's lit up by the sun. DSCOVR changed that when it started orbiting the planet from a million miles away and taking photos of its view every two hours. The satellite is stationed between the sun and the Earth in a location that's known as the Lagrange point 1.
The NASA-NOAA collaboration was launched aboard a SpaceX flight in February 2015 to monitor solar wind condition. It can warn us about approaching coronal mass ejections, keep an eye on the ozone layer and the state of Earth's vegetation, and, as you can see, take awesome photos of our home. It also once captured the moon -- and its shadow during an eclipse -- crossing our planet on cam.
