NASA's Carbon-Sniffing Satellite Sleuth Arrives at Launch Site

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole 202-358-0918
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-209 November 12, 2008

NASA's Carbon-Sniffing Satellite Sleuth Arrives at Launch Site

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, the leading
human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate, has arrived at Vandenberg Air
Force Base, Calif., to begin final launch preparations.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory arrived Tues., Nov. 11, at its launch site on California's central
coast after completing a cross-country trip by truck from its manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corp. in
Dulles, Va. The spacecraft left Orbital on Nov. 8. After final tests, the spacecraft will be integrated
onto an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket in preparation for its planned January 2009 launch.

The observatory will help solve some of the lingering mysteries in our understanding of Earth's
carbon cycle and its primary atmospheric component, carbon dioxide, a chemical compound that is
produced both naturally and through human activities. Each year, humans release more than 30
billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. As much as 5.5
billion tons of additional carbon dioxide are released each year by biomass burning, forest fires and
land-use practices such as "slash-and-burn" agriculture. These activities have increased atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels by almost 20 percent during the past 50 years.

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap the sun's heat within Earth's atmosphere, warming it and
keeping it at habitable temperatures. However, scientists have concluded that increases in carbon
dioxide resulting from human activities have thrown Earth's natural carbon cycle out of balance,
increasing global temperatures and changing the planet's climate.

While scientists have a good understanding of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from burning fossil
fuels, their understanding of carbon dioxide from other human-produced and natural sources is
relatively poor. They know from ground measurements that only 40 to 50 percent of the carbon
humans emit remains in Earth's atmosphere; the other 50 to 60 percent, they believe, is absorbed by
Earth's ocean and land plants.

Scientists do not know, however, precisely where the absorbed carbon dioxide from human emissions
is stored, what natural processes are absorbing it, or whether those processes will continue to work to
limit increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the future, as they do now. The observatory's space-
based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide will have the precision, resolution and coverage
needed to provide the first complete picture of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide
emissions. It will show the places where they are absorbed, known as "sinks," at regional scales
everywhere on Earth. Its data will reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in
the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions.

The observatory's science instrument features three first-of-a-kind, high-resolution spectrometers that
spread reflected sunlight into its various colors. By analyzing these spectra, scientists can detect what
gases are in Earth's atmosphere and determine their amounts. The spectrometers are specifically
tuned to measure the amount of reflected sunlight absorbed by carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen.
These measurements will be analyzed to yield monthly estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide over
1,000-square-kilometer (621-square-mile) regions of Earth's surface to an accuracy of 0.3 to 0.5
percent. Scientists will analyze these data using global atmospheric chemical transport models,
similar to those used to predict the weather, to locate carbon dioxide sources and sinks.

The observatory will launch into a 705-kilometer (438-mile) near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit
inclined 98.2 degrees to Earth's equator, mapping the globe once every 16 days. The mission is
designed to last two years. It will fly in formation with the five other NASA missions that are part of
the "A-Train," or afternoon constellation, of Earth Observing System satellites that cross the equator
each day shortly after noon. This coordinated flight formation will enable researchers to correlate the
observatory's data with data from the other NASA spacecraft, including nearly simultaneous carbon
dioxide measurements from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Program mission
managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington. Orbital Sciences provides mission operations under JPL's leadership.
Hamilton Sundstrand in Pomona, Calif., designed and built the observatory's science instrument.
NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for
launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena.

For more information about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, visit: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov .

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