OCO-2 Satellite Goes Into Orbit to Track Carbon Dioxide

[bananas]

Source: NBC

NASA sent its latest environmental satellite into orbit early Wednesday to track the ebb and flow of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, five years after the first Orbiting Carbon Observatory was lost due to a launch failure. OCO-2 rose from its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a Delta 2 rocket, joining a train of Earth-watching satellites in a pole-to-pole orbit. The $468 million mission is designed to pinpoint where atmospheric CO2 comes from and where it goes on a global scale, to help scientists understand the mechanism behind climate change.

The first OCO was destroyed in 2009 just minutes after liftoff when its Taurus XL rocket plummeted into the Indian Ocean near Antarctica. After an investigation, NASA decided to try again with a nearly identical spacecraft and a different type of rocket. OCO-2's launch was supposed to take place Tuesday, but was delayed 24 hours due to a launch-pad malfunction.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/oco-2-satellite-goes-orbit-track-carbon-dioxide-n146126

[bananas]

1. Solar arrays deployed and functioning. nt

[Neurotica]

3. Great news! nt

[groundloop]

2. SWEET!!!!! (I imagine a lot of right wing heads will explode when they read about this)

The nerve of NASA, using taxpayer money to study global climate change !!!!!

[ffr]

4. Information is the enemy of RWNJs

I half cringed when the launch was delayed yesterday after the failed launch of the previous satellite in 2009. It would only take one saboteur, a mole cloaked in white working against, but for NASA to keep the failures coming.

Thankfully, the launch went well and if there was one or more, the mole(s) failed.

[Orsino]

5. Will the Koch bros. down it with a missile?

Or just have Congress defund and erase is data? Or just rewrite the reports?

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, bananas.