New Satellite to Enhance Monitoring of Space Weather

A new satellite is on a 1.5 million-kilometer, 110-day journey toward the sun. Once it reaches its orbit, DSCOVR — the Deep Space Climate Observatory — will replace an aging craft to monitor space weather. DSCOVR will be fixed in orbit at L1, the so-called Lagrange point where the gravitational pull of the sun and of Earth cancel each other out.  From this distant outpost, it will document the continuous stream of charged solar particles. Life on Earth is mostly protected from...

© La Voix de l'Amérique - mercredi 11 février 2015