WASHINGTON
The
US space agency is to launch on Tuesday a satellite that tracks
atmospheric carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas that contributes to
global warming.
The launch of the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory-2 is expected at 2:56 am Pacific time (0956 GMT) from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
"Now that
humans are acknowledging the environmental effects of our dependence on
fossil fuels and other carbon dioxide-emitting activities, our goal is
to analyse the sources and sinks of this carbon dioxide and to find
better ways to manage it," said Gregg Marland, a professor in the
Geology Department of Appalachian State University, Boone, North
Carolina.
The satellite will take 24 measurements every second, about a million per day, but clouds are a major obstacle.
Its field of view is about one square mile (three square kilometers), so even wispy clouds can obscure its measurements.
NASA
expects about 100,000 of the satellite's data snapshots from around the
world daily will be sufficiently cloud-free to be useful.
Kevin
Gurney, an associate professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, said
the satellite will contribute to a series of NASA-funded efforts to
measure fossil fuel emissions.
"This research and OCO-2
together will act like partners in closing the carbon budget, with my
data products estimating movements from the bottom up and OCO-2
estimating sources from the top down," Gurney said.
Its launch window on Tuesday is quite short, just 30 seconds.
"The
timing has to be so precise because OCO-2 will join the A-Train, a
constellation of five other international Earth-observing satellites
that fly very close together to make nearly simultaneous measurements of
our planet," the NASA website said.
If it misses the launch window, there may be another launch attempt Wednesday.
However, weather conditions were expected to be 100 per cent favourable for launch.
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