(O)rbiting=(C)arbon=(O)bservatory

[neufer]

First NASA CO2 Satellite Set for Launch
By Michael Mecham Feb 8, 2009

<<Nature's carbon is far more abundant than what humans produce, but man-made sources are growing. Between 1751 and 2003, 306-626 billion tons of carbon were added to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, mostly through fossil fuel combustion, cement manufacturing and forest clearing. The range in those numbers underscores the uncertainties of current carbon sampling methods.

Scientists posit that about 60% of human emissions are absorbed. The rest stays in the atmosphere. While they say absorption is split 50:50 between oceans and soil, they are uncertain where the carbon is going when on the land. Clearly, the political drive to battle global warming will be on firmer scientific ground if concrete facts can be given.

To this end, NASA is set to add another satellite to its inventory. About the size of a phone booth, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory isn't even as big as some of the instruments on the space agency's larger Earth-observing fleet.



Built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., the 972-lb. OCO will become the newest member of the Afternoon Constellation, or A-Train, of Earth-observing spacecraft funded by NASA, France and Canada.

It is set for a 1:53 a.m. PST launch on Feb. 23 by an Orbital Sciences XL 3110 booster from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The solid-fueled Taurus will raise OCO into an initial 398-mi.-high orbit for a 10-day systems and instrument checkout. Over the next 20 days, the spacecraft's own propulsion system will raise it to an altitude of 438 mi. where it will be inserted at the front of the A-Train. The observatory will be the train's sixth member, followed, in order, by NASA's Aqua and CloudSat, France's Calipso and Parasol, with Aura as the caboose.

Their Sun-synchronous orbit has a near polar inclination. They circle the Earth every 99 min. and pass the same ground track every 16 days, crossing the equator at 1:30 p.m. local time. The A-Train stretches 3,800 mi. in space, but orbital speeds of 4.7 mps. mean they pass the same ground spot so rapidly their observations can be coordinated. OCO will be only 3.3 min. ahead of Aqua.

The OCO's single instrument was manufactured by Hamilton Sundstrand Sensor Systems of Pomona, Calif., and assembled and tested at JPL with one basic task in mind: measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide globally. Of special note will be the "sinks" that absorb CO2 and the "sources" that release it. These amount to the same thing in different stages. Healthy forests absorb CO2; dying or felled forests emit it. Cold oceans absorb the gas; warmer waters release it.

Vertical atmospheric measurements will draw CO2 profiles as they appear on cloud-free days. Monthly regional-scale concentrations will factor in cloud cover. They will span continents and oceans in surface regions of 386 X 386 mi.

The instrument uses three high-resolution grating spectrometers - two for CO2 measurements and one for molecular oxygen. Viewing is through an f1.8 Casseýýgrain telescope with a resolving power of 20,000. The camera is so powerful its control algorithms have to factor in that it can image individual buildings.

"Ten years ago, it couldn't have been built," Crisp says of the instrument. But new resolving techniques and better focal plane arrays, design and construction methods have made it possible. The detectors have a quantum efficiency close to 90% of perfection, he says.

Carbon dioxide molecules aren't measured directly; the instrument tabulates the absorption of sunlight by CO2 and molecular oxygen molecules before and after the sunlight is reflected off the Earth's surface. Since each molecule has a specific infrared signature, they can be singled out and counted. There are two detectors for CO2 because it is easier to spot near Earth's surface at 1.61 microns and in the atmosphere at 2.06 microns. The molecular oxygen A-band channel acts as a survey control because its presence in the atmosphere is constant.

The observatory will continuously collect 12 soundings per second while over the sunlit hemisphere - approximately 33,500-35,500 individual measurements. It will record 8 million over a 16-day cycle with ground tracks that are separated by less than 100 mi. at the equator.

Pointing the instrument straight down in a nadir mode provides the highest spatial resolution on the surface and is expected to be most useful in cloudy or mountainous regions. But the instrument achieves a stronger signal-to-noise ratio when it is aimed at the bright glint spot where the Sun's reflection is brightest on the Earth's surface. So the camera will alternate between nadir and glint pointing modes over sequential global ground tracks. Periodically, it also will be aimed at ground-based solar-looking spectrometers for calibration checks.

Humans release about 8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually, says Anna Michalak, an OCO science team member from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. About half of that remains in the atmosphere, the rest is absorbed by oceans, plants and soils in carbon sinks.

"But it's difficult to pinpoint where these sinks are," she says. The promise of OCO is that it can better define the sinks and track changes in them, making it easier to predict how the carbon cycle evolves. Crisp notes that the total variation in CO2 between sinks and sources is only about 3%. "So we have to distinguish between very small differences."

OCO is part of NASA's Science Pathfinder program of relatively quick, low-cost and highly focused missions using small- or medium-sized spacecraft. The total mission cost is $273.4 million and it has a nominal two-year life span. Success will encourage climate change scientists to ask for more. But the spacecraft they will pitch is likely to shift technologies. A more advanced instrument might rely on light detection and ranging (Lidar) remote-sensing technology because it is unhampered by clouds and can operate day or night, says Crisp.>>

[apodman]

Nice job providing the correct number of bonds.

O=C=O

The OCO logo isn't quite right with O-C-O, is it?

[neufer]

Nice job providing the correct number of bonds.

O=C=O

The OCO logo isn't quite right with O-C-O, is it?

As a former NOAA employee,
I've always considered my NASA compatriots just a little bit *OCO*

*OCO* : hollow, addle, claptrap, concave, frothy (Portuguese)

Bond, covalent double Bond.

[apodman]

Bond, covalent double Bond.

0=7=0 ?

[makc]

The OCO logo isn't quite right with O-C-O, is it?

every 2nd bond is right behind the 1st one.

[bystander]

Formation Flying: The Afternoon “A-Train” Satellite Constellation

NASA's A-Train Satellites

• OCO
  Aqua
  CloudSAT
  CALIPSO
  PARASOL
  Aura

[neufer]

The OCO logo isn't quite right with O-C-O, is it?

every 2nd bond is right behind the 1st one.

That might make sense if the "foreground" lines were left of center (rather than right).

Clearly this 3D logo version of carbon dioxide is taking liberties with the standard 2D representation...which is OK.

[makc]

That might make sense if the "foreground" lines were left of center (rather than right).

They are, check again:

[bystander]

Launch Mishap Ends OCO Mission

• Several minutes into the flight of the Taurus rocket carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory spacecraft, launch managers declared a contingency after the payload fairing failed to separate.
  
  A press conference to discuss the contingency is scheduled to begin no earlier than 8 a.m. EST.

[neufer]

Launch Mishap Ends OCO Mission

• Several minutes into the flight of the Taurus rocket carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory spacecraft, launch managers declared a contingency after the payload fairing failed to separate.
  
  A press conference to discuss the contingency is scheduled to begin no earlier than 8 a.m. EST.

------------------------------------------------------------------

• NASA Satellite Fails to Reach Orbit
  Article Tools Sponsored By
  By KENNETH CHANG
  Published: February 24, 2009
  
  <<The Orbiting Carbon Observatory lifted off on schedule at 1:55 a.m. Pacific time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a four-stage Taurus XL rocket. But three minutes later, during the burning of the second stage, a clamshell section that protects the satellite as it rises through the atmosphere failed to separate as commanded. The third and fourth stages ignited properly, but because of the added weight of the clamshell, the satellite did not reach orbit. It fell back to Earth, landing in the ocean just short of Antarctica.
  
  [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Botticelli_Venus.jpg ]
  
  “It’s a huge disappointment to the entire team that’s worked very hard over years and years and really did their best to see it through,” said Charles P. Dovale, the launch manager. “The reason not everyone is able to do this is — it’s hard. And even when you do the best you can, you can still fail. It’s a tough business.”>>

------------------------------------------------------------------

[aristarchusinexile]

Launch Mishap Ends OCO Mission

Several minutes into the flight of the Taurus rocket ..."

Taurus? Ford's having trouble in the automotive market, too.

[bystander]

OCO News Briefing on NASA TV

[interstellaryeller]

Nasa has lost the centrepiece satellite of its $280 million climate-change mission after a catastrophic launch failure today. The carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite was fired on a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 795724.ece

[bystander]

NASA Climate Satellite Crashes in Ocean after Launch Failure
Space.com - 24 February 2009

[BMAONE23]

Perhaps they could build another and take it up in the shuttle in May during the hubble refit

[apodman]

Perhaps they could build another and take it up in the shuttle in May during the hubble refit

Vandenberg is generally used for launch into polar orbits AFAIK.

Hubble is about 600 km high in an orbit inclined 28.5 degrees to the equator.

OCO was supposed to be in a near-polar orbit (inclined nearly 90 degrees to the equator) at 705 km altitude.

The shuttle only flies at one altitude and orbital inclination per mission, and AFAIK has never flown a polar orbit from a Florida launch.

And unless they built a spare OCO (Contact-style), it wouldn't be ready in time anyway.

[makc]

killed 2 of 3 identical posts by apodman. what's up, dead cocroach under ENTER key?

on subject, I wonder if NASA gets any kind of insurance when such things happen?

[BMAONE23]

Perhaps they could fit both with a small pair of solid rocket boosters to get the proper altitude and attitude for their respective orbits. Similar to what they did with the prototype shuttles in Armageddon. Go up, capture Hubble, refit the new payloads., release Hubble, fire retrofit boosters, altering orbital path and altitude, releace OCO, go home. Two missions for the launch cost of 1. and no chocolaty mess

[makc]

fire retrofit boosters, altering orbital path and altitude

I bet this bit would need tons of fuel, actually.

[apodman]

killed 2 of 3 identical posts by apodman. what's up, dead cocroach under ENTER key?

Sorry and thank you. For reasons unknown (I'm still investigating this as well as other phenomena you know about), sometimes my posts fail. So I have to resubmit. Then sometimes they all show up afterwards, and sometimes they don't. But I always check back and clean up after myself. This time I checked and there were no duplicates (yet). Then I left the Café to read today's new posts in APOD Discussions. There was a lot to read, so I was there for 20 minutes. When I got back here to double-check, you had already struck. Each time I had to resubmit, I edited a little more - so thank you for identifying and preserving the latest and greatest version. I'm willing to believe the failed submissions are the fault of something on my computer, not the server (and as I say I'm still investigating), but I once responded to another member who asked about a similar problem - if I recall correctly this was right after the upgrade to phpBB3, around the same time it started happening to me. I'm in the habit of copying my post to the clipboard before submitting in case it fails so I don't have to think and type again. Lately (not a factor in today's case), my submissions have been rejected if there has been another post on the same topic while I was typing; I thought this was possibly a purposely selected phpBB option to allow members to see the new posts and modify theirs accordingly before submitting, but maybe the correlation I've observed is only coincidence.

[makc]

thank you for identifying and preserving the latest and greatest version.

I actually did not notice any difference, but something inside said it could be there. Probably my subconsciousness is reading way faster than I do So I just kept the last post, and it seems it worked out good.

[bystander]

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for OCO-2 Mission
NASA JPL OCO-2 (2010-206) | 22 June 2010

NASA has selected Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission. The spacecraft will fly in February 2013 aboard a Taurus XL 3110 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The total cost of the OCO-2 launch services is approximately $70 million. The estimated cost includes the task ordered launch service for a Taurus XL 3110 rocket, plus additional services under other contracts for payload processing, OCO-2 mission-unique support, launch vehicle integration, and tracking, data and telemetry support.

OCO-2 is NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate. OCO-2 will provide the first complete picture of human and natural carbon dioxide sources and "sinks," the places where the gas is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored. It will map the global geographic distribution of these sources and sinks and study their changes over time. The OCO-2 spacecraft will replace OCO-1, lost during a launch vehicle failure in 2009.

Once more into the breach for Orbital Sciences and the carbon observatory
Scientific American | Observations | 23 June 2010

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was meant to precisely measure carbon dioxide throughout Earth's atmosphere. Instead, it wound up shattering on the Atlantic Ocean near Antarctica in 2009, a victim of a failed fairing—the shroud that keeps the satellite from burning up during launch.

The loss of the satellite was a blow to U.S. efforts to measure the most ubiquitous gas causing climate change. Instead, NASA had to content itself with the ICESCAPE mission—a cruise, perhaps better suited to NOAA, to investigate the impact of climate change on the Arctic.

But there is another. The Obama administration has resurrected the OCO program and, on June 22, NASA awarded the contract to launch it to… Orbital Sciences Corporation, the same company whose technology failed last time out.