NASA DSCOVR · EPIC
Earth From a Million Miles
A million miles sunward of us, NASA's DSCOVR spacecraft hangs at the point where the Sun and Earth's gravity balance — and from there it sees something no one on the ground ever can: the entire sunlit face of our planet, all at once. Here is its most recent view. Press play to watch a full day's images and see the Earth turn beneath the camera.
23:35 UTC
Latest full rotation
June 27, 2026
22 images · centred over the Pacific
Press play to watch the planet rotate through the day.
NASA DSCOVR / EPIC, from Sun–Earth L1 (~1.5 million km). Public domain · updated daily.
Why we always see the whole, sunlit Earth
Most Earth-observing satellites orbit just a few hundred kilometres up, sweeping over the surface in narrow strips. DSCOVR is different. It sits a million miles away at Lagrange point 1 — directly between Earth and the Sun — so it stares straight down the sunbeam at a planet that is always fully lit. The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captures the full disk in ten colours of light, from ultraviolet to near-infrared, several times a day. Strung together, those frames show the planet rotating — continents and storm systems wheeling slowly past, exactly as they did that day.
The view that changed us
Until 1968, no human had ever seen the whole Earth. Then Apollo 8 rounded the Moon and photographed Earthrise; four years later Apollo 17's crew took the Blue Marble — still one of the most reproduced photographs ever made. In 1990 Voyager 1 turned back from beyond Neptune and caught Earth as a single bright pixel: the Pale Blue Dot.
Those images did something no chart ever could — they showed a borderless world, small and alone and worth looking after. DSCOVR now sends home that same humbling view every single day. It is, quietly, the most important picture in the world.
The spacecraft and its perch
Vantage point
~1.5 million km
Sun–Earth Lagrange point 1
Spacecraft
DSCOVR
On station since 2015
Camera
EPIC
10 narrowband colour channels
Cadence
~10–22 / day
A full rotation, every day
What it sees
The whole disk
Always the fully sunlit face
Day job
Solar wind
Earth's space-weather sentinel
Keep looking
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