A small satellite stationed a million miles away from earth is actualizing a dream of former Vice President Al Gore. Using the satellite, NASA has been posting photos that show how the world looks from the satellite.

Experts said that the earth images are not the main goal of the Deep Space Climate Observatory. These images will allow people see how their home planet actually looks like. Making these photos quite accessible is an important part of the mission.

In 1998, Al Gore came up with the idea and in February, DSCOVR blasted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It was launched under a partnership between NASA, NOAA and US Air Force. Main aim of the satellite is track the solar winds that stream toward earth from the sun. These solar storms are capable of disrupting air travel, communications, electrical grids and satellite operations.

Though it is the main mission of the spacecraft, it also has a camera that faces earth. On Monday, the NASA website started that shows images from DSCOVR. NASA said that every image taken from the satellite’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera is equivalent to about 3 megabytes in size.

NASA said that full earth views are made by combining three separate images. “DSCOVR will serve as our tsunami buoy in space, if you will, giving forecasters up to an hour’s warning of these huge magnetic eruptions from the sun that occasionally occur, called Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs”, said Tom Berger, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.