Update: On December 29, The U.S. Air Force, acting in its capacity as the launch services provider with SpaceX, and with concurrence from NOAA and NASA, announced a delay in the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission. DSCOVR is now expected to launch no earlier than January 29, 2015. NOAA continues to monitor any risk to the schedule in close coordination with its partners and will provide updates as they are available.
NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), scheduled to launch January 23, will give forecasters more reliable measurements of solar wind speed, improving their ability to monitor harmful solar activity, and replace an aging research satellite currently used to warn of impacts to Earth. The satellite will also include earth-observing instruments.
Doug Whiteley, Deputy Director at NOAA/NESDIS/OSD, described the readying of DSCOVR as “quite a journey” in a press conference Thursday. The satellite was built over a decade ago for a project named Triana that was subsequently canceled, and it had been stored at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
Whiteley said the current effort to propel DSCOVR into an L1 orbit around the Sun 1 million miles from Earth involves a tri-agency partnership. NOAA is the mission operator, NASA supported the satellite’s refurbishment, and the Air Force is providing launch service—via a SpaceX Falcon 9 v 1.1 launch vehicle.
DSCOVR’s data will be used by forecasters at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), part of NOAA’s National Weather Service, for timely and accurate warnings of solar storms that have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system, adversely affecting satellites, GPS navigation, aviation, and the electric power industry. A large storm, Whitely said, would have the potential to cause $ 1 to $2 trillion in damages with a four- to ten-year recovery period. A constant, reliable flow of solar weather data can help infrastructure operators take preventive measures.
Douglas Biesecker, Ph.D., DSCOVR program scientist at SWPC, added that 44,000 individuals and organizations are registered to receive timely, relevant, and actionable solar activity information via email.
In its position between the Earth and sun in the L1 (Lagrange point) orbit, DSCOVR will be the nation’s first operational spacecraft in deep space. It will replace the 17-year old NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) research satellite as the nation’s primary warning system for geomagnetic storming headed towards Earth. ACE will continue its important role in space weather research. Data from DSCOVR and a new forecast model coming online in fall 2015 will enable forecasters to predict regional geomagnetic storming.
The solar-measuring instrument is called Plasma-Magnetometer (PlasMag). It measures solar wind activity, including the magnetic field and the velocity distribution (magnitude and direction) of solar wind particles with higher time resolution than existing instruments.
PlasMag is a comprehensive space weather suite consisting of three parts: a fluxgate vector magnetometer, a Faraday cup solar wind positive ion detector, and a top-hat electron spectrometer.
In addition to space weather technology, DSCOVR will carry two NASA Earth-observing instruments that will gather a range of measurements from ozone and aerosol amounts, to changes in Earth’s radiation, said Richard Eckman, Ph.D., NASA DSCOVR program scientist. Constantly facing the solar-illuminated side of the Earth from L1, the instruments will provide a novel perspective, Eckman said. The instruments can track volcanic plumes and permit the study of ozone distribution while providing better estimates of aerosol properties and varying vegetation patterns due to drought, rain, and fire.
Specifically, the Earth observing instruments are the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR)—a cavity radiometer designed to measure the absolute spectral irradiance (power of electromagnetic radiation) reflected and emitted from the entire sunlit face of the Earth. This measurement will improve our understanding of the effects of changes to Earth’s reflected and emitted radiation caused by human activities and natural phenomena. This information can be used for climate science applications.
The second Earth instrument is the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC)—an imager that provides global spectral images of the entire sunlit face of Earth and insight into Earth’s energy balance. EPIC’s observations will provide a unique angular perspective and will be used in science applications to measure ozone amounts, aerosol amounts, cloud height and phase, vegetation properties, hotspot land properties, and UV radiation estimates at Earth’s surface.
The launch is scheduled for 6:49 p.m. EST on January 23, 2015 from Cape Canaveral, FL. It will take approximately 110 days for DSCOVR to reach the L1 orbit, between the Earth and Sun. From this position, DSCOVR is able to monitor and send information to NOAA forecasters on the surge of particles and magnetic field from the sun about an hour before it reaches Earth.
The DSCOVR mission is a partnership between NOAA, NASA and the U.S. Air Force. NOAA will operate DSCOVR from its NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, MD, and process data at the SWPC for distribution to users within the United States and around the world. The data will be archived at NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, CO.
Interested parties can access space-weather information for free via http://www.spaceweather.com/.
NASA received funding from NOAA to refurbish the DSCOVR spacecraft and its solar wind instruments, develop the ground segment and manage launch and activation of the satellite. The Air Force funds and oversees the launch services for DSCOVR. It also hosts NASA-funded secondary sensors for Earth and space science observations. The Earth science data will be processed at NASA’s DSCOVR Science Operations Center and archived and distributed by NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center.
Visit the DSCOVR homepage at http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/DSCOVR/index.html.
