New CO2 Satellite Now Online, Transmitting Climate Data To Earth
NASA’s new carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite just opened its eyes for the first time. Based on the initial data its sending back to Earth, it appears to have 20/20 vision and scientists will soon have plenty more data to analyze.
The satellite, dubbed the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, was launched last month as part of an effort to better understand how carbon moves around the globe. That includes tracking human emissions from burning fossil fuels as well as natural cycles related to the growing season and ocean currents.
The whole mission is slated to cost around $468 million over 2 years. So it’s understandable that the scientists and engineers who built and launched the satellite greeted the first batch of data with a lot of excitement and a little trepidation.
“It went through a rocket launch that shakes the whole observatory pretty hard. Until you can turn it on and see the data, there’s always a little apprehension and uncertainty,” Ken Jucks, a OCO-2 program scientist, said. “So far every test on the satellite and the instrument within it are working as expected and that’s good news. We have every expectation that the data will be as advertised.”
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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/nasa-oco2-satellite-data-17893