February 25th, 2009
By John DeFore
Green Right Now
Environmental scientists were to have a new set of eyes starting this week, thanks to a brand new satellite intended to help make sense of carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere.
But that goal will be postponed, thanks to a dramatic launch failure that took place hours before dawn on Tuesday. As NASA’s initial report put it, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite “failed to reach orbit” this morning after lifting off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; the mishap was preliminarily blamed on a clamshell-like enclosure for the satellite that evidently failed to separate. Later reports assert that the rocket splashed into the ocean near Antarctica. (The story cited above notes that the company that built the rocket and satellite for NASA, Orbital Sciences Corp., suffered a rocket failure in 2001 while attempting to launch a satellite for monitoring ozone.)
As this NASA web page explains, the COO was meant to be “the first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide,” and for a period of at least two years, the device would have mapped the globe at intervals of once per 16 days, taking highly accurate measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The data is needed to explain what exactly is happening to the CO2 produced by human activity — researchers have long known that much of it is absorbed (”at least temporarily,” the agency says) by “sinks” in the oceans or on land, but don’t fully understand how and where this happens.
“An improved understanding of carbon sinks is essential to predicting future carbon dioxide increases and making accurate predictions of carbon dioxide’s impact on Earth’s climate,” NASA’s pre-mission material stated, going on to claim that space-based measurements could reduce our uncertainties about CO2 balance by a whopping 80%.
The cost of the destroyed satellite was over a quarter-billion dollars; a Mishap Investigation Board was immediately convened to investigate the cause of the accident.
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