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The little satellite that could
How a vice president’s dream led—after a very long delay—to the DSCOVR spacecraft
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, August 16, 2021

If satellites had personalities, DSCOVR would be a scrappy little fighter: battered, bloody, but always stumbling back to its feet and getting back into the ring to fight some more. This little satellite, about the size of a college dorm room refrigerator, finally launched in February 2015, 16 years after it was first thought up in a dream.

DSCOVR, which stands for Deep Space Climate Observatory, was originally named Triana, after Rodrigo de Triana, who was reported to be the first European to see the Americas while aboard Christopher Columbus’ flagship La Pinta. But the satellite has had many other unofficial, and unflattering nicknames over the years, mostly owing to its very unusual origins.

It was February 1998 and Vice President Al Gore had a dream. In his dream he saw a picture of Earth, a tiny blue-white ball against the vastness of space, spinning slowly, fragile. Gore already had an enlarged photo of the famous Apollo 17 image of the fragile Earth against the blackness of space on his office wall in the West Wing of the White House. He woke up at 3 am. The dream gave Gore an idea: what if a satellite imaged the Earth from far out in space, 24 hours a day? Could it show flow of the clouds, the changing of the seasons? Could such an image change the world, convincing people of the delicate nature of the planet they lived on?

After doing a little research on the Internet in the morning, Gore called Daniel Goldin, the NASA administrator, and told him about his idea. The satellite could be placed at a Sunward location known as L1 where the Sun’s gravity balances the Earth’s gravity. There it would have the Sun at its back and Earth would always appear in daylight. Goldin agreed to consider it.

The story first went public in March 1998 in a front-page Washington Post article accompanied by a photograph of the Earth. Vice President Gore had clearly decided to give the newspaper an exclusive. The article stated that Gore was going to announce the satellite idea the next day during a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Goldin told the Post reporter that he hoped to keep the satellite project’s cost below $50 million, and hopefully close to $20 million.

“I believe there is tremendous scientific value in having constant live television pictures of the Earth,” Gore told the Post. “With the entire hemisphere in view, fully lit by the sun, scientists will be able to analyze weather systems and cloud patterns in ways they cannot today. With global warming a growing concern, and with problems like El Nino causing growing concern, this will be of tremendous value,” Gore said. “I believe it will have an inspirational value that’s hard to describe,” he added.

According to the Post, the satellite idea was entirely Gore’s, and the vice president pushed it with fervor. Gore first told Goldin of the idea in mid-February and Goldin assigned two NASA scientists to work on it. On March 6, Gore informed Goldin that he was going to publicly announce the plan the following week, at which point Goldin assigned two more NASA scientists to the project. There was none of the normal scientific vetting of the mission common to most NASA science projects. “My head is still spinning,” Goldin said of the rapid pace (and perhaps the vice president’s fait accompli in announcing the project).

That same day, the White House issued a press release announcing the satellite plan Unnamed sources on Capitol Hill later chafed that Gore publicly announced the program before he had briefed Congress.
 

The little satellite that could (part 2): from Triana to DSCOVR to orbit
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, August 30, 2021

Triana had been dreamed up by Vice President Al Gore in 1998 and gone through a contentious development process. The original goal had been to launch it into orbit on a space shuttle mission in 2001. But by 2001, with Republican President George W. Bush in the White House, the program was grounded; funding was suspended a little over a week after the inauguration. Officially, NASA indicated that the space agency would eventually launch the spacecraft, which was intended for a unique orbit at the Lagrange 1 point where it would be able to view both the Earth and the Sun. But for the next eight years, NASA did not announce any launch plans, and what little news did emerge about the spacecraft was always followed with longer periods of silence and inactivity. Triana risked becoming what pilots often refer to as a “hangar queen,” sitting in storage, cannibalized for spare parts (see “The little satellite that could (part 1)”, The Space Review, August 16, 2021.)

The justification for not flying Triana was ostensibly because NASA was facing a $4 billion overrun on the International Space Station that led to cuts elsewhere in the budget. NASA provided $24.9 million to bring the spacecraft up to a “stable state of suspension” before putting it in storage. The plan was for Triana to be sufficiently documented at that point that it could be finished and launched if a decision was made to do so. NASA estimated that $90 million had been spent by the time Triana was placed in storage.

Although Triana was ostensibly able to fly on a future shuttle launch, the satellite was not placed on any launch manifests throughout 2001. By 2002, the NASA administrator announced that shuttle flights would be reduced from six to four per year, further limiting the opportunities for launching the spacecraft. NASA Earth science officials began considering foreign offers to launch Triana. In early 2002 there were reports that Triana could possibly fly on a European Ariane rocket. In May 2002 it was reported that Triana could be launched commercially on a Russian Cyclone rocket, without the participation of the Russian government, although Ariane 5 and Russia’s Dnepr rockets were also options.
DSCOVR

Triana’s principal investigator, Scripps researcher Francisco Valero, wrote a letter to Aviation Week & Space Technology explaining that “Synergism, made possible by the deep-space location of Triana, will multiply the scientific return of our investment in space. Triana is the first of a new generation of deep-space platforms that will help advance the Earth sciences to a new level.”[3] Despite Valero’s advocacy, Triana’s problems were not in the stars but in politics. Throughout 2002, NASA remained silent on the spacecraft some had nicknamed “Goresat.”
 

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