A year after launch, the U.S. government's most unlikely space weather mission is ready for action

摘要

Saying DISCOVR traveled an unlikely path into orbit is an understatement. The satellite, conceived in 1990s as Triana - a NASA Earth observation mission proposed by then-U.S. Vice President Al Gore - was stored for nearly a decade at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center before being resurrected as DSCOVR, a NOAA space weather mission. On Feb. 11, 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent DSCOVR on the first stage of its journey to Earth-sun Lagrange point 1, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.