The previous mission failed to make orbit, crashed into ocean.
A Delta II rocket blazed off the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early Wednesday morning to begin a landmark mission to survey carbon dioxide gas in Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, is expected to provide insight into how the planet adjusts to the increased production of carbon dioxide from a vantage point in orbit that will allow it to take readings on a scale never achieved before.
While ground stations have been monitoring carbon dioxide concentrations, OCO-2 will be the first spacecraft to conduct a global-scale reading over several seasons. The spacecraft is expected to produce detailed readings to provide regional sources of carbon dioxide as well as sinks for the greenhouse gas.
“There’s quite a lot of urgency to see what we can get from a satellite like OCO-2,” said David Crisp, the science team lead for the mission.
The spacecraft flew into orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The July 2 liftoff came at 5:56 a.m. Eastern time, 2:56 Pacific time. The hexagonal spacecraft is about 6 feet long and 3 feet in diameter and weighs 985 pounds. The Delta II first stage’s single liquid-fueled engine ignited moments before the three solid-fueled boosters roared to life to catapult the rocket and spacecraft off the pad toward space.
The launch was from the west coast so the spacecraft could enter a polar orbit of the Earth, a flight path that will see it cross over the Arctic and Antarctic regions during each revolution and get a complete picture of the Earth. It will fly about 438 miles above the planet’s surface to take its readings.
“The only way to accomplish a polar orbit from U.S. soil is to launch from Vandenberg,” said Tim Dunn, NASA’s launch manager for the flight.
The mission is the first of its kind in the agency’s extensive history of Earth-observing spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched to replace the first OCO that did not make it into orbit due to an anomaly in February 2009. The spacecraft carries one instrument and its sole focus is detecting carbon dioxide and watching from space as the Earth “breathes” to see what becomes of the gas.
The instrument is precise enough that researchers will be able to count the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the layers of the atmosphere and use the data to draw conclusions about how the increasing amount of gas will affect things like the global temperature. OCO-2’s mission is to last at least two years.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, managed the launch preparation and flight into orbit. The OCO-2 mission is handled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“We’ve been preparing for the OCO-2 mission for almost two years now,” Dunn said before launch. “The biggest challenge has been in bringing the Delta II launch vehicle out of retirement. The last time we launched on a Delta II was October 2011, a weather satellite.”
The Delta II has been one of NASA’s most reliable launchers ever, registering more than 150 launches for NASA, the Air Force and commercial satellite makers from 1989 to 2011.
The launch team has been visiting Vandenberg during the preparation and spent the two weeks before launch there, running through the last phases of processing and countdown rehearsals.
With the mission safely begun, Dunn congratulated the team soon after OCO-2 separated from the Delta II’s second stage and opened its pair of solar array wings.
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Now that we have a carbon dioxide spy in the sky, watch for its data to become either secret (if it doesn’t show what they expect) or front page news.
Steven Mosher says:
July 2, 2014 at 11:11 pm
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Thanks for sharing the link to their main page.
Why do they need a satellite when they already have all the answers?
OK Mosh, why do they call the place “CO2 Virtual Science”? Really. Why? LOL. Sorry.
“Now that we have a carbon dioxide spy in the sky, watch for its data to become either secret (if it doesn’t show what they expect) or front page news.”
My prediction is that the reported data will be front page news. If the raw data gives an outcome they do not expect, they will simply adjust it to conform to the alarmist narative.
big in the MSM today, with most headlines a variation of “Caribbean coral reefs could be gone in 20 years” which the public will probably presume to be because of CAGW. however, UK Times’ Ben Webster sees it differently, having remembered previous CAGW scare stories on the subject no doubt:
3 July: Australian: Climate change wrongly blamed as lead cause of loss of Caribbean coral reefs, scientist says
by Ben Webster (UK Times)
A MISPLACED focus on the impact of climate change has delayed vital work to save vanishing coral reefs in the Caribbean, a leading scientist has claimed.
The area covered by live coral has more than halved since the 1970s, primarily because of overfishing and coastal pollution, according to Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of the global marine programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/climate-change-wrongly-blamed-as-lead-cause-of-loss-of-caribbean-coral-reefs-scientist-says/story-fnb64oi6-1226976146949?nk=471a10dc950a7ddb70fcedf12c494383#mm-premium
Guardian still manages to include CAGW as a “major threat”:
2 July: Guardian: Jessica Aldred: Caribbean coral reefs ‘will be lost within 20 years’ without protection
Major report warns that loss of grazing fish due to pollution and overfishing is a key driver of region’s coral decline
While climate change and the resulting ocean acidification and coral bleaching does pose a major threat to the region, the report – Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012 – found that local pressures such as tourism, overfishing and pollution posed the biggest problems…
“Even if we could somehow make climate change disappear tomorrow, these reefs would continue their decline,” said Jeremy Jackson, lead author of the report and IUCN’s senior adviser on coral reefs. “We must immediately address the grazing problem for the reefs to stand any chance of surviving future climate shifts.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/02/caribbean-coral-reef-lost-fishing-pollution-report
I feel most sorry for the poor taxpayers who have had to fund this mission. As a part of excessive government spending, there is no doubt that many also paid for it with their jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrg1CArkuNc
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
“David says:
July 2, 2014 at 10:47 pm
How much carbon footprint did it leave when it launched?,”
Actually not that much. Liquid oxygen, hydrogen etc with a touch of kerosene. Lot of water vapour though!
It’s not rocket science………. 🙂
***AP, to their credit, points out “experts” had blamed CAGW:
3 July: NZ Herald: AP: Colourful parrotfish key to saving Caribbean’s coral reefs?
Colourful parrotfish and spindly sea urchins are the key to saving the Caribbean’s coral reefs, which may disappear in two decades if no action is taken, a report by several international organisations said.
The report, which analysed the work of 90 experts over three years, said Caribbean reefs have declined by more than 50 percent since the 1970s.
***It said that while many experts have blamed climate change for the problem, a drop in the populations of parrotfish and sea urchins is largely responsible…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11287048
Hurrah! At last! Some good news!
There has been much fuss about measurements of Arctic ice which have little use. The CO2 measurements address a basic tenet of the AGW-scare.
Nobody knows the cause(s) of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Some (e.g. the IPCC) say the cause is the small anthropogenic CO2 emission, and others (e.g. M Salby) say the cause is the much larger natural CO2 emission. Meanwhile, some others (e.g. me) point out that the available data does not demonstrate if the cause is anthropogenic, or natural, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes.
In a few years we will have data to analyse which may be able to replace the guesswork of e.g. the IPCC and the unjustifiable faith of e.g. cartoonmick (at July 2, 2014 at 10:53 pm). Science is about evidence and analysis: it is not about guesswork and faith.
Richard
Will NASA cover the whole world or supress the tropics, where CO2 happens to be highest. The Japanese GOSAT recently only partly shows the tropics:
http://1.2.3.11/bmi/www.gosat.nies.go.jp/eng/img/XCO2_L2_201308010831average_v02_21.png
In puplications from 2009 you can clerarly see that CO2 stems from tropical rainforests: http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/eng/gallery/FTS_L2_SWIR_CO2_gallery.htm
Another inconvenient fact swept under the rug.
“The instrument is precise enough that researchers will be able to count the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the layers of the atmosphere…”
It can measure all points at all times in all locations? Right! I wonder weather their algorythm will work as designed?
I doubt that the satellite’s measurement precision is sharp enough to count individual molecules, but it may help to know where the main natural sinks and sources of CO2 are, which may help to understand the details of the carbon cycle.
The main transfer is quite well known from O2 and δ13C changes: on seasonal level, there is a back and forth exchange of ~150 GtC (CO2 counted as carbon), of which ~90 GtC with the oceans and ~60 GtC with vegetation. The difference between natural ins and outs is also well known: currently ~4.5 GtC/year more sink than source, of which ~1 GtC/year into vegetation and the rest in the (deep) oceans.
Humans provide ~9 GtC/year, which means that any natural contribution to the increase is non-existent, despite the theoretical calculations of Salby and others, which violates several observations. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
What the satellite may help with is to get a detailed insight of where the main natural variability in CO2 rate of change originates: the influence of e.g. an El Niño on intake/respiration/decay of the tropical forests, the influence of volcanic outbursts and similar events.
I have no problems with the money spent on this kind of satellites: this really increases our knowledge of the earth’s processes. Better spend it on good measurements than on multi-million dollar climate models which fail every time again…
Otto Weinzierl says:
July 3, 2014 at 12:28 am
In publications from 2009 you can clearly see that CO2 stems from tropical rainforests:
The tropical oceans are continuously emitting CO2 due to the upwelling of cold CO2-rich deep ocean waters at the end of the Great Conveyor Belt. At the start in the NE Atlantic a lot of CO2 is absorbed and sinks with the cold salty waters into the deep. The total amount is about 40 GtC/year as CO2 which takes 500-1500 years to return to the surface.
As long as the sink rates and source rates are equal, that will not influence the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Currently there is more sink than source: because of the increased pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, some 3 GtC/year more is sinking into the deep than is released from upwelling.
It’s sad that one of the world’s leading science blogs names the wrong substance in a post title.
Would it be soot, graphite or diamond the satellite’s supposed to be searching for?
Steven Mosher says:
July 2, 2014 at 11:11 pm
check here if youre (sic) paranoid about data hiding.. its a conspiracy
Steve,
I was doing some research into hard drive failures recently. Know what the # 1 cause of hard drive failures is in the US Internal Revenue Service over the last 5 years?
A [subpoena] duces tecum…..
Ask Lois ‘I take The Fifth’ Lerner, the disgraced head of the US Internal Revenue Service, and 5 other key IRS managers that also had improbable ‘hard drive failures’ and ‘required destruction of their hard drives’.
Check here, if youre (still sic) a snarky ‘conspiracy’ denyar on WUWT.
Mac
Well that is the good news, and now the bad their already working on ‘adjustments’ that may be needed for its values should those values prove to be ‘problematic ‘
Damn my nerve damaged hands!
subpeona“subpoena”Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 3, 2014 at 1:10 am
The tropical oceans are continuously emitting CO2 due to the upwelling of cold CO2-rich deep ocean waters at the end of the Great Conveyor Belt. At the start in the NE Atlantic a lot of CO2 is absorbed and sinks with the cold salty waters into the deep. The total amount is about 40 GtC/year as CO2 which takes 500-1500 years to return to the surface. …
It sounds from your posts like you actually understand this stuff. I’ve been trying to sort through the media reporting on this satellite — which seems to me to be not of great quality. What I take away is that the atmospheric CO2 measurement program put into place by Keeling in the 1950s tells us that CO2 (unlike water vapor) is reasonably well mixed across the planet and is increasing. What this satellite is intended to do is tell us exactly where the CO2 originates and exactly where it is being removed from the atmosphere, And the quantities being sourced/sunk. Do I have that right or am I totally confused?
Making more Hockey Sticks from Satellite Data
Wayne Delbeke says:
….. why do they call the place “CO2 Virtual Science”?
“CO2 Virtual Science” is what they’ve been doing for the last 30 years.
Now they can relate that to the USHCN “virtual temperature record”.
Meanwhile, the ISEE3 reboot team have managed to fire the engines to spin up the satellite ready for the main insertion burn. http://spacecollege.org/isee3/
“The only way to accomplish a polar orbit from U.S. soil is to launch from Vandenberg,” said Tim Dunn, NASA’s launch manager for the flight.
I’m no rocket surgeon, but this is stupid.
It will be “worse than we thought”
Is there any way a global map of CO2 emissions ‘hot spots’ will be described in alarming press releases showing they coincide with population centers? You bet. It will be wonderful to have a satellite to show us something we already know.
My prediction is that it will find that CO2 is NOT a well mixed gas. It will find large sources of CO2 and lower levels of CO2 in the opposite places of what is expected. The biosphere will show it’s power
My prediction is that they will find Pettersson is right and there is much larger absorption of human emissions that is currently accepted, thus solving the “missing sink” problem…. then they will “correct” the data.