With One Space Observatory Down, NASA Uses Another to Map CO2
Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 20:21
in Astronomy & Space
SAN FRANCISCO--The Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO , was designed to monitor the movement of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere starting this year, but instead it plunged into the ocean in February due to a launch malfunction. Now an instrument on another NASA probe is enabling researchers to map atmospheric CO2, and revealing that its global distribution is surprisingly uneven, with regional variations of up to 5 percent. [More]