WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says its first satellite dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide is in final preparations for a Feb. 23 launch.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's "Orbiting Carbon Observatory" will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It's designed to provide the first complete picture of human and natural CO2 sources, as well as "sinks" -- the places where it is pulled from the atmosphere and stored, NASA said.
Carbon dioxide is the major human-produced greenhouse gas that's driving changes in Earth's climate.
"It's critical that we understand the processes controlling carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today so we can predict how fast it will build up in the future and how quickly we'll have to adapt to climate change caused by carbon dioxide buildup," said David Crisp, the project's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Scientists said the new observatory -- on a 438-mile near-polar orbit -- will collect about 8 million measurements every 16 days for at least two years with the precision, resolution and coverage needed to characterize carbon dioxide's global distribution. It will lead five other NASA satellites that cross the equator each day shortly after noon, making a wide range of nearly simultaneous Earth observations.
