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Carbon Monitoring Satellite Is Lost During Launch

By Brad Johnson on Feb 24th, 2009 at 10:50 am

Carbon Monitoring Satellite Is Lost During Launch

OCO Launch The first satellite designed exclusively to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space failed to reach orbit during this morning’s launch, NASA reported. The Orbital Carbon Observatory (O-C-O, an acronym that matches the chemical diagram for carbon dioxide) “did not achieve orbit successfully in a way that we could have a mission,” Nasa launch commentator George Diller announced following the early-morning liftoff. “I am bitterly disappointed about the loss of OCO,” Dr. Paul Palmer, a scientist collaborating on the mission, told BBC News. “My thoughts go out to the science team that have dedicated the past seven years to building and testing the instrument.” NASA’s announcement explains the loss in dry terms:

When OCO launched Feb. 24, the payload fairing did not separate as it was supposed to and the mission ended.

The OCO would have complemented the Japanese satellite Gosat, designed to measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions with an infrared spectrometer and a cloud and aerosol imager. Gosat successfully launched on Friday. The two satellites were designed to work together and cross-check each other’s measurements, with “a common ground validation network to help combine data from the missions.”

Satellite measurement of CO2 emissions is needed to complete scientists’ understanding of the carbon cycle. Scientific American’s David Biello explained the mystery of the missing carbon before OCO’s launch:

Human activity—from coal-fired power plants to car tailpipes—is responsible for nearly 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide wafting into the atmosphere yearly. We know that roughly 15 billion metric tons remains in the atmosphere for a century or more. A portion of the rest ends up in the ocean—acidifying saltwater and making life tough for corals—and another chunk appears to be helping tropical trees grow thicker. We don’t know, however, where the rest of humanity’s CO₂ is disappearing to.

Comments
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4 Responses to “Carbon Monitoring Satellite Is Lost During Launch”

Anders Says:

Tragic indeed. It is now the job of NASA and the US climate change community to quickly tackle the issue on how to achieve monitoring capability of this sort in the short-term. Sure, the contractors can build another satellite, but we are still talking about a minimum of a 2 year ordeal.

Hopefully the Japanese mission will prove a great success in its monitoring, but it is important to continue to provide numerous monitoring capabilities to quiet the climate skeptics this blog seems so inclined to focus upon.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:52 am
jps Says:

The Japanese data should do. It’s not like it was a synthetic aperture interferometry mission.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Brad Says:

The Gosat and OCO sensors were different and each satellite was going to calibrate the other. Also, the OCO sensor would have delivered measurements of higher precision than Gosat.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Michael F. Sarabia Says:

Keep it a secret…
No major loss.
They wanted to find the sinks and sources of CO2, why?
Do they think there are not enough sources of CO2, therefore there is no Global Warming?
Do they think there are too many sinks of CO2, therefore there is no Global Warming?
Do they doubt the Greenland icebergs are NOT melting?
NASA just proved that the last hold out, that Antarctica was cooling down, has been debunked. It IS warming up and its ice is melting at a rate roughly the same as Greenland’s.

Was it intended to shine an spot light on the powerplants in China and India and deflect the whole discussion into a political one?

We only need to convince China, India and the USA that producing electricity with renewable sources is CHEAPER.
If we cannot do that, we will not make headway.
——–
I read that electricity supply contracts from windmill farms were signed a few years ago at a rate lower than 4 Cents per watt -down from 25 Cents five years earlier.
Better numbers must be available and a case can be made.
We do not need OCO, either we stop ALL CO2 sources or we are doomed. There is no third alternative.
Some people do not seem to know that CO2 accumulates, it does not have a half life that will make it go away.
(I do wonder why solar winds do not blow the air at the top, some of it must be CO2. I have not seen numbers on that.)
February 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm