As Joe tells us, the mission scheduled for launch this Sunday was first proposed by Vice President Al Gore way back in 1998. He's been working on a series of stories about science and invention called Joe's Big Idea, and today it's the curious history of DSCOVR. The image will come from a spacecraft called DSCOVR, and we'll hear more about that spacecraft now from NPR's Joe Palca. But if all goes well later this year, everyone will have access to that view. SIEGEL: The three astronauts aboard Apollo 8 were the first to see earth that way. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: We have a beautiful view of Florida now, and at the same time we can see Africa. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: We see the Earth now almost as a disc. There are only 27 people who have blasted off from the Earth, looked back and seen our planet as a blue sphere hanging in the vastness of space. And, despite the new name and mission, DSCOVR will still provide that picture of Earth that Gore first had in mind. GoreSat may have been the butt of some jokes, but it looks like the former vice president will get the last laugh. "In fact, I'm going to be at Cape Canaveral for the launch." "I'm extremely happy about it, as you might imagine," says Al Gore. So the revival of Triana is making the Air Force happy it's making NOAA happy it's making NASA happy. "Having that 'heads up' would be very helpful." Jason Cothern, chief of the Air Force's Space Demonstrations division. "There are things we can do to put our spacecraft or other systems in safe states - to minimize the damage that could be caused by any form of space weather," says Col. The military is also interested in early warning - so interested that the Air Force is actually paying to launch DSCOVR. And we can get about an hour's warning (at best) to prepare for the impact." Thomas Berger, head of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, calls DSCOVR "our buoy in space, if you will, that warns us of that solar tsunami coming toward the Earth. Its instruments got a tuneup, and the spacecraft was made ready for launch. It needed a replacement, and scientific instruments NASA added to Triana made it just the thing NOAA was looking for. The agency was relying on a NASA satellite that was way past its prime. With sufficient warning, utilities can make adjustments to protect the grid, and it's NOAA's job to provide early warning for these storms. These storms can cause havoc on the electric power grid. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decided it needed a new space weather satellite.Įvery so often the sun burps out a cloud of charged particles that hurtle through space toward Earth. So, even though Triana was built and almost ready for launch, NASA shipped it to Building 29 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and put it in storage. "Most of the time, you're not going to go to the wall on any one project, especially if it's a relatively small project that is not your first priority to start with," he says. Launius says NASA wasn't about to expend any political capital trying to keep Triana alive. The new Republican president and the Republicans in Congress weren't interested in Democrat Gore's pet project. So NASA added instruments to measure the solar wind and radiant energy coming from Earth.īut then Gore lost an election to George W. "They certainly wanted to make it a more scientifically viable project than, maybe, was envisioned initially by Mr. Launius, now associate director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, was NASA's chief historian when Gore proposed Triana. ![]() NASA was game to build and launch Triana, but Roger Launius says the space agency officials weren't crazy about the idea of a satellite that only had one instrument on board. The space probe, originally dubbed Triana, would point a telescope with a color camera back at our planet from L1, and send images down to Earth. So he proposed sending a probe to a spot a million miles from Earth - a place known as the L1 Lagrange point, where the gravity of the Earth and the sun cancel each other out. "Wouldn't it be nice," Gore asked in 1998, "to have that image continuous, live, 24 hours a day?" ![]() Gore was so smitten with the view of Earth from space that he put an enormous print of a picture taken by Apollo 17 on the wall of his West Wing office. It's a mission with an unusual history.Īl Gore first proposed the idea for DSCOVR back in 1998, when he was vice president. ![]() The images will come courtesy of a spacecraft called Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). The three astronauts aboard Apollo 8 were the first to get that view if all goes well, later this year everyone will be able to get it on a daily basis over the Internet. There's something majestic, even awe-inspiring about the sight of planet Earth as a blue disc, hanging in the vastness of space.
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