Tracking the invisible: NASA’s new mission to map Earth's carbon cycle
In short: Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 800,000 years, driven by human activities adding nearly 40 billion tons to our atmosphere annually. Now, a specialized new spacecraft is preparing to launch, aiming to reveal exactly where this greenhouse gas is being emitted and where it is being hidden.
Launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 1 July, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) serves as NASA's inaugural mission focused entirely on monitoring atmospheric CO2. The mission seeks to resolve a significant scientific puzzle: while human activities like fossil fuel burning and deforestation add massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, less than half of these emissions remain there. The rest is absorbed by natural 'sinks,' but the specific locations and identities of the land-based sinks responsible for this absorption are not yet fully understood.
Operating in a 438-mile (705-kilometer) altitude near-polar orbit, OCO-2 will serve as the lead satellite in a constellation of five international Earth monitoring satellites. These satellites orbit the planet every 99 minutes, crossing the equator daily at approximately 1:36 p.m. local time. By mapping the global geographic distribution of carbon sources and sinks, the mission will track how carbon moves through the biosphere—from being released by human industry to being captured by photosynthesizing plants or dissolved into seawater as bicarbonate.
The mission's operational management is a collaborative effort, with NASA selecting Caltech to operate both the OCO-2 satellite and the OCO-3 instrument located on the International Space Station. This data is vital for more than just climate modeling; it provides a window into ecosystem health. For instance, in 2020, researchers used OCO-2 data to monitor how severe flooding impacted crop growth. By studying plant productivity from farmlands to high-latitude forests, scientists hope to predict how effectively Earth's natural systems will continue to regulate our planet's energy balance.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: New NASA Observatory Set to Take On Carbon Conundrums
- Also: NASA Selects Caltech to Operate the Orbiting Carbon Observatories
- Also: New NASA Space Observatory to Study Carbon Conundrums - NASA
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