On Monday, NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) released a new image of the sunlit side of the Earth from one million miles away. Taken July 6, the photo of our Mother Planet was 17 years in the making, according to Bloomberg.
The photo was taken using equipment called the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and a telescope. The EPIC will be taking daily pictures of the Earth from now on, and the data will be made available to the public by September, according to Time Magazine.
"The high quality of the EPIC images exceeded all of our expectations in resolution," said Adam Szabo, one of the scientist for the DSCOVR project via a NASA press release. "The images clearly show desert sand structures, river systems and complex cloud patterns. There will be a huge wealth of new data for scientists to explore."
DSCOVR, which was launched in February, is NASA's project alongside the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force. Its mission is to mainly monitor solar winds and space weather for scientists to get accurate readings of solar storms that could disrupt communications.
"These new views of the Earth, a result of the great partnership between NOAA, the U.S. Air Force, and NASA, give us an important perspective of the true global nature of our spaceship Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington in the press release.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama shared the new photo of the Earth on his Twitter account.
Just got this new blue marble photo from @NASA. A beautiful reminder that we need to protect the only planet we have. pic.twitter.com/JQ3174P0LF
— President Obama (@POTUS) July 20, 2015
