NASA’s first dedicated Earth remote sensing satellite to study atmospheric carbon dioxide from space. Launched on 2 July 2014 from Vandenberg Air Force Base to join the A-Train, the satellite is designed to provide space-based global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and improve our understanding of how this important greenhouse gas is distributed across the globe. With its three high-resolution grating spectrometers, data collected by OCO-2 could be combined with meteorological observations and ground-based CO2 measurements to help characterize CO2 sources and surface fluctuations on regional scales at monthly intervals for two years.
Geology and Earth Sciences
A NASA mission that studies the distribution of sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2. The satellite was launched on 2 July 2014, from California, into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705 km. It replaces OCO-1, which failed at launch.