NASA Launches New Carbon Observatory
 
July 2, 2014:  NASA has successfully launched its first spacecraft dedicated
to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide.
 
On Wednesday, July 2nd, at 2:56 a.m. PDT, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
(OCO-2) raced skyward from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a United
Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Approximately 56 minutes after the launch,
the observatory separated from the rocket's second stage into an initial
429-mile (690-kilometer) orbit. Initial telemetry shows the spacecraft is in
excellent condition.
 
OCO-2 soon will begin a minimum two-year mission to locate Earth's sources of
and storage places for atmospheric carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced
greenhouse gas responsible for warming our world and a critical component of
the planet's carbon cycle.
 
"Climate change is the challenge of our generation," said NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden. "With OCO-2 and our existing fleet of satellites, NASA is
uniquely qualified to take on the challenge of documenting and understanding
these changes, predicting the ramifications, and sharing information about
these changes for the benefit of society."
 
http://youtu.be/BZtXdBBzJyA
 
A Delta II rocket leaps off the launch pad to begin NASA's OCO-2 mission at
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Image Credit:  NASA TV.  Play the
video
 
OCO-2 will take NASA's studies of carbon dioxide and the global carbon cycle
to new heights. The mission will produce the most detailed picture to date of
natural sources of carbon dioxide, as well as their "sinks" -- places on
Earth's surface where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The
observatory will study how these sources and sinks are distributed around the
globe and how they change over time.
 
"This challenging mission is both timely and important," said Michael
Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington. "OCO-2 will produce exquisitely precise
measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations near Earth's
surface, laying the foundation for informed policy decisions on how to adapt
to and reduce future climate change."
 
Carbon dioxide sinks are at the heart of a longstanding scientific puzzle that
has made it difficult for scientists to accurately predict how carbon dioxide
levels will change in the future and how those changing concentrations will
affect Earth's climate.
 
"Scientists currently don't know exactly where and how Earth's oceans and
plants have absorbed more than half the carbon dioxide that human activities
have emitted into our atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era,"
said David Crisp, OCO-2 science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "Because of this we cannot predict
precisely how these processes will operate in the future as climate changes.
For society to better manage carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, we need
to be able to measure the natural source and sink processes."
 
Precise measurements of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide are
needed because background levels vary by less than two percent on regional to
continental scales. Typical changes can be as small as one-third of one
percent. OCO-2 measurements are designed to measure these small changes
clearly.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZtXdBBzJyA&feature=youtu.be
 
A ScienceCast video explains the OCO-2 mission.  Play it.
 
During the next 10 days, the spacecraft will go through a checkout process and
then begin three weeks of maneuvers that will place it in its final 438-mile
(705-kilometer), near-polar operational orbit at the head of the international
Afternoon Constellation, or "A-Train," of Earth-observing satellites. The
A-Train, the first multi-satellite, formation flying "super observatory" to
record the health of Earth's atmosphere and surface environment, collects an
unprecedented quantity of nearly simultaneous climate and weather measurements.
 
OCO-2 science operations will begin about 45 days after launch. Scientists
expect to begin archiving calibrated mission data in about six months and plan
to release their first initial estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations in early 2015.
 
The observatory will uniformly sample the atmosphere above Earth's land and
waters, collecting more than 100,000 precise individual measurements of carbon
dioxide over Earth's entire sunlit hemisphere every day. Scientists will use
these data in computer models to generate maps of carbon dioxide emission and
uptake at Earth's surface on scales comparable in size to the state of
Colorado. These regional-scale maps will provide new tools for locating and
identifying carbon dioxide sources and sinks.
 
OCO-2 also will measure a phenomenon called solar-induced fluorescence, an
indicator of plant growth and health. As plants photosynthesize and take up
carbon dioxide, they fluoresce and give off a tiny amount of light that is
invisible to the naked eye. Because more photosynthesis translates into more
fluorescence, fluorescence data from OCO-2 will help shed new light on the
uptake of carbon dioxide by plants
 
For more information about OCO-2, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov/oco2
 
Credits:
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit:
Science@NASA
 
Web Links:  Global Climate Change -- climate.nasa.gov
 
OCO-2 -- mission home page
 
 
Regards,
 
Roger

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 * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)