After two flight delays in four days, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) finally launched on Wednesday evening, carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket toward it’s new home almost a million miles from Earth.

The two launch delays, however, are just a drop in the bucket for a craft that was originally supposed to be launched on the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia mission, STS-107, in 2003 and which gathered dust in a warehouse for 5 years afterward.

Now that it is finally up there many may still find themselves wondering what exactly DSCOVR is going to do.

DSCOVR, originally named Triana, was conceived by then Vice-President Al Gore in 1998. Inspired by the Apollo 17 “Blue Marble” photograph, gore wanted it to stream near-continuous images of the Earth back to us via the internet. He hoped that the images would advance science as well as awareness.

The people at NASA, the original home of the project, bought in to the idea but added some more practical features as well.

The satellite was scheduled to be launched with STS-107, the doomed flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia. However, the whole project was shelved long before that flight took off. Shortly after taking office, President George H.W. Bush scrapped the project and the satellite was moved to a warehouse until shortly after President Barack Obama took office.

In November of 2008 the satellite was dragged out of storage and reinvented a bit for launch with a different rocket. The project went from being a NASA mission to a joint venture between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the United States Air Force.

So, by the time it launched on Wednesday it was more than a decade late already and had acquired some new insignias and new technology.

Once it is in place, DSCOVR will stream images of the Earth back to us but it will also do a great deal more. The spacecraft will simultaneously monitor the Earth and the Sun. Part of its mission will be to monitor solar storms, however it will also monitor the Earth gathering information on ozone, aerosol and radiation among other things.

Solar winds, when they occur, can have dramatic impacts on the Earth. This is especially true for electricity and communications equipment. The instruments on board DSCOVR will measure magnetic field intensity, direction and the distribution of ions and electrons in solar winds.

This will provide scientists at NOAA with a great deal of information about incoming solar storms and provide warning to industries and localities what will be impacted by the storms.

DSCOVR will also be able to obtain the information 120 times faster than the ACE spacecraft, which previously provided a similar function. It will be able to provide real-time data on space weather at a pace 100 times faster than any spacecraft currently in orbit.

“Located in line between the sun and the Earth, DSCOVR will be a point of early warning whenever it detects a surge of energy that could trigger a geomagnetic storm destined for Earth. According to the National Academies of Sciences, a major solar storm has the potential to cost upwards of $2 trillion, disrupting telecommunications, GPS systems, and the energy grid. As the nation’s space weather prediction agency, when DSCOVR is fully operational and our new space weather forecast models are in place, we will be able to provide vital information to industries and communities to help them prepare for these storms,” said Stephen Volz, Ph.D., assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service in a statement.

The spacecraft will also take full-Earth photographs every two hours while using instrument packages to monitor changes in aerosols, ozone, volcanic ash and dust, cloud hight, vegetation cover and clime. This information will be useful for environmental and climate purposes on Earth but can also have some bearing on how Earth reacts to incoming solar storms and radiation.

It is expected to take about 110 days for the DSCOVR satellite to be in position and begin sending back useful data.