from the Calgary Herald: Canadian mini-satellite may solve carbon puzzle (h/t to WUWT reader “Freezedried”)
Tom Spears Canwestnews Service
Friday, February 27, 2009
While NASA lost a $285-million US satellite this week, a Canadian microsatellite that does the same job is chugging along happily in orbit –at 1/1,000th the cost.
The 30-centimetre-long University of Toronto satellite is searching for the “missing” carbon dioxide–the vast amount of Earth’s main greenhouse gas that somehow vanishes each year.
That’s what NASA’s OCO(orbiting carbon observatory) satellite would have done, if it had survived launch on Tuesday. The big difference: Canada built and launched its tiny version for $300,000.
The OCO launched but failed to reach orbit. (see WUWT story here)
Details on the hardware are here
Meanwhile, the U of T’s CanX-2 is cruising 700 kilometres above Earth “and functioning really well,” after some glitches that followed its launch last April, said Ben Quine, the director of space engineering at York University–which made an instrument aboard the tiny CanX. Its job, like OCO’s, is to find Earth’s missing greenhouse gas.
“The measurement principle is almost exactly the same as the one for the OCO,”he said. “It’s very sad when you lose a spacecraft, but it also means that we are the only people in orbit with one-kilometre resolution on the ground.”
That means York’s Argus instrument can look at details below. A Japanese satellite does the same job, but can’t look at features less than 10 kilometres wide.
The problem is that where carbon dioxide comes from, and where it is sucked out of the atmosphere, remains poorly understood.
“Clearly, if we’re going to do something about climate change, we need to understand where CO2 is produced and particularly where it’s absorbed.That’s much less clear,” Quine said.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
They should have inserted one in Gore’s colon to find missing carbon. A resolution of 1 km should be enough in his case.
I know it might not get published, but it’s pretty funny!
Lot’s of Scottish heritage up here. We can squeeze two dimes out of a nickel.
“Missing” Carbon Dioxide?
Can someone please explain this to an idiot layman?
Let’s hope there is honest reporting/analyzing of the data and that there will be cross-checking for verification purposes. Is this possible today?
Once again, the “Little engine that could” reigns supreme.
I guess the question is now can the raw data be accessed by a broad spectrum of scientists???
Mike
NASA ‘paid’ $285-million for a mission to find more about CO/GW and they somehow lost their satellite.
To me it seems like it was already planned.
Hope this Canadian mini-satellite gives them more information about CO that they don’t already know.
How was the Candian satellite launched?
Can anyone tell me if co2 is able to escape the earths atmosphere? I read once it was possible if the molecules achieved sufficient speed through a complex process but it was never explained if this ever actually happened.
Tonyb
Good. I look forward to seeing the results of this and Japan’s CO2 satellite.
I see the NASA culture of “not invented here” is alive and well. Why use someone else’s satellite when for 1,000 times more you can launch your own satellite?
TonyB, I read not that long ago that big blobs of our atmosphere get ripped of the Earth during solar wind episodes. I guess that includes the CO2 as well. Sorry, I don’t have the link but surely tis can be found easily.
The CO2 satellites may be able to measure CO2 concentrations but are they able to measure the RATES of emission and absorption? That would certainly be surprizing.
I am afraid through that they will use the data to force the tax on big emitters and to penalize those countries that emit more and not really for scientific goals. But obviously, they will surely find that most CO2 is emited from natural sources and that we only contribute for a fraction of the total.
Did the NASA satellite measure more than CO2? If not, why did it need to be so big?
The carbon dioxide is not necessarily escaping into outer space. We need to look at the obvious sinks, which are the cooling oceans and CO2 eating plant life on the earth’s surface. Isn’t that what the NASA satellite was all about?
bb
I would guess that any areas where CO2 concentrations are well below average can be assumed to be areas where absorbtion is taking place. Then other scientists can examine those areas to try and determine what is absorbing the CO2.
“The problem is that where carbon dioxide comes from, and where it is sucked out of the atmosphere, remains poorly understood.”
This is a most telling statement . . .
The missing CO2 has been sequestered as a carbonate after solution in water. The oceans contain 60 times more CO2 (because of chemical sequestration) than would be expected from straightforward application of Henry’s Law.
Amazing what you can do with a Lego City model kit and some old Meccano. Some party helium balloons would have been required for the launch though….
Can the satellite read the absorption lines in the spectrum of radiation leaving earth?
AND they have universal health care
Good news, specially “at 1/1,000th the cost” ( due to no bureaucracy ). Hope its data will not be “adjusted”(no Hansen there).
Ray
So I wasn’t imagining things then 🙂 I had a look round and found this
http://humbabe.arc.nasa.gov/mgcm/HTML/FAQS/thin_atm.html
See para 7. Now obviously Mars isn’t Earth but is there any relevance to our circumstances at all? Can Co2 be stripped away into space-in other words do we ‘leak’ co2? If so how much?
tonyB
This carbon anomaly has been known for a long time; I seem to recall it is something like 25% of the total carbon in circulation disappears in some unexplained way. There were stories last year of the discovery of desert soils taking up a good amount of carbon. Haven’t seen much followup on this.
I’ts good to know that the Canucks are on the ball and have a going operation up there.
I’m in full agreement that this carbon needs to be chased down; but I don’t think it is in anyway germane to the climate change problem; well there isn’t any climate change problem to begin with, and if there was, it would not have anything to do with carbon.
But just from the point of the earth’s biota, carbon is a key ingredient, and we ought to know where it goes, and comes from, just for that reason.
Too bad someone can’t come up with a research study to study H2O and find out where it comes from and goes to, and the dynamics of its phase change processes in the atmosphere, which control the earth’s surface, and lower atmosphere temperature.
john H (09:38:26)
Seems that this one was launched by India from its Sriharikota launch site into a sun-synchronous orbit, along with a gaggle of other microsats from different countries on board the same launch vehicle.
JohnH (09:38:26) :
“How was the Candian satellite launched?”
Slingshot……..
Actually, the story behind these little nano-satellites is cool… and is at the provided link of http://www.utias-sfl.net/nanosatellites/CanX2/system.html
They use off-the-shelf hardware, in this case a relatively simple ARM7 processor, and can be tossed into space using almost trivial launch facilities and lifters. They have teeny tiny thrusters and inertial positioners accurate to 1 degree. I’m impressed.
As far as the actual sensors, and project mission, well the page is slightly more vague on that, and I don’t see a data download area.
However, nanosatellites using today’s tech are probably at LEAST as capable as the state of the art just a decade or two past. You just have to love miniaturization, LSI, and hardware that looks like it was built from the R/C section of the local hobby store!