NEW YORK: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket made its first foray into deep space this week, depositing a U.S. space weather satellite into an orbit that eventually will reach more than four times farther away than the moon.
The rocket’s upper-stage deposited the Deep Space Climate Observatory, nicknamed DSCOVR, into an initial orbit that stretched more than 770,000 miles from Earth. From there, DSCOVR will spend the next 110 days getting itself into its operational orbit 930,000 miles from Earth and circling the sun.
A camera aboard the upper-stage shared the view. More pictures will be coming from DSCOVR. Though its main mission is to monitor the sun for potentially dangerous geomagnetic storms, the satellite has a camera that will be pointed to the sun-lit side of Earth. Pictures will be taken every two hours and posted on the Internet the following day.
DSCOVR is a joint mission of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Air Force, which paid for the ride to orbit.
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