Editorial: DSCOVR EPIC/NISTAR: 5Years of Observing Earth From the First Lagrangian Point
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) was launched in February 2015 to a Sun-Earth Lagrange-1 (L1) orbit, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from the sunlit side of the Earth. In many regards, the DSCOVR is a unique mission: for the first time, it delivers well-calibrated and multi-spectral measurements of Earth from the L1 point. This unique location allows near-hourly views of the entire illuminated disk of the Earth, multiple times a day. The moderately high observational cadence results in cloud-free views of nearly the entire Earth land surface and global ocean with significantly higher frequency than is available to the operational polar orbiters, and at a near-global scale inaccessible to geostationary sensors.