NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory Lost at Launch

The 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide that human activities produce annually is a global problem, but scientists still don't have a truly global picture of where carbon in the atmosphere comes from and where it goes.

NASA hoped to begin creating that picture with the launch this morning of its $270 million Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO), but the satellite never made it to orbit. A piece of equipment that protects the satellite as it shoots through the atmosphere failed to separate from the rocket, NASA officials said. The OCO satellite crashed down in the ocean near Antarctica.

Michael Freilich, NASA's Earth Sciences Division director, said the agency would be working in the next weeks and months to find ways to continue to advance the OCO mission, including assessing other available satellites. The OCO took about eight years to develop, and the loss of the satellite was a disappointing setback but not the end of the mission, he said.

We will take a good, solid and thoughtful look at how best to advance Earth science, given all the assets we have available now and into the near future, and decide how it is best for science and for the nation to move forward.

The OCO satellite would have provided data complementary to Japan's newly launched climate satellite GOSAT (Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite), also known as Ibuki (Japanese for breath). Together, they could have provided the most complete picture of carbon sources and sinks – places such as oceans or forests that absorb carbon – ever seen.

GOSAT measures global concentrations of both CO2 and methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, but has a lower resolution, meaning a fuzzier picture. OCO would have only measured carbon dioxide, but it would have taken many more measurements, and at a higher resolution. Its smaller measurement footprint would have decreased interference from clouds, and in general, created a more detailed picture.

As David Crisp, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator of the mission, explained:

Even though [both satellites] are measuring carbon dioxide, the primary missions differ and the measurement approach differs. The GOSAT system was primarily designed to measure human sources of CO2 for treaty compliance such as Kyoto.

The OCO, on the other hand, was to search for carbon sinks that, so far, have absorbed half of the CO2 that humans have emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

The satellite was designed to measure carbon dioxide levels by analyzing sunlight that has bounced off Earth and been reflected back to space. Three times a second, three spectrometers on board would take a snapshot of the sunlight bouncing back from the approximately 2.5 kilometer spot of Earth being observed at that moment. Carbon dioxide absorbs some wavelengths of light, particularly in the infrared region. When seen through spectrometers, the wavelengths that interact with CO2 will be less bright. Measuring their dimness indicates the level of carbon dioxide.

Scientists were counting on those measurements to better understand the carbon cycle by showing how sinks works and locating the most absorbent sinks on the planet:

Will those sinks still be there 50 years from now? I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know where the sink is. I don’t know where in the oceans, what processes are needed to make it work, whether it’s North Atlantic, North Pacific, South Atlantic, South Pacific.

The NASA orbiter would have provided an immensely greater amount of data about the global distribution of carbon dioxide than researchers have ever had, said Anna Michalak, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in the carbon cycle.

Scientists' current measurements of CO2 are sparse in two ways, Michalak explained. First, the data come from fewer than 300 sites worldwide, with data from the tropics – which are believed to be substantial carbon sinks – being particularly meager.