NASA's Carbon-Studying Satellite Takes Pole Position in 'Super Observatory' Array

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With Earth's atmosphere in the sights, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, is positioned to begin its scientific mission, the first-ever spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide.

While atmospheric carbon dioxide is a critical natural component of the world's carbon cycle, it's also the human-produced greenhouse gas most responsible for warming the planet.

That said, the OCO-2, which is planned to carry out its surveying mission for at least two years - if not well after that, as many other missions launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have managed to do, is expected to produce the most detailed picture to date of sources of carbon dioxide and their natural sinks, spots on Earth's surface where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere.

The primary objective of the OCO-2 is to increase science's understanding of how carbon dioxide sources and sinks are geographically distributed on regional scales and how their efficiency changes over time.

"The initial data from OCO-2 appear exactly as expected -- the spectral lines are well resolved, sharp and deep," OCO-2 chief architect and calibration lead Randy Pollock of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a news release. "We still have a lot of work to do to go from having a working instrument to having a well-calibrated and scientifically useful instrument, but this was an important milestone on this journey."

Following launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base July 2, mission controllers following the craft from Earth established two-way communications with the observatory, stabilized its orientation in space and deployed its solar arrays to provide electrical power, the news release explained.

The OCO-2 team then checked out OCO-2's systems to ensure they were functioning properly - which they apparently were.

Then, through July, the craft executed a series of propulsive burns to maneuver into its near-polar, target orbit, an estimated 438-miles, or 705 kilometers, above the planet's surface.

The OSO-2 will hold the lead position in the international Afternoon Constellation, or so-called "A-Train," a multi-satellite formation that will function, said NASA officials, as a "super observatory" to record the health of Earth's atmosphere and surface environment.

The OCO-2 will be followed into space by the Japanese GCOM-W1 satellite, designed to examine the earth's water cycle, and then NASA's Aqua, CALIPSO, CloudSat and Aura spacecraft, respectively, which, if all everything works correctly, will all fly over the same point on Earth within 16 minutes of each other.