NASA is likely to launch a spacecraft which will study carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. The space agency will launch the spacecraft on February 23 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The new NASA space mission is expected to unravel climate mysteries of the earth. The space mission called   Orbiting Carbon Observatory will offer the first complete picture of human and natural carbon dioxide sources. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will provide mapping of the global geographic distribution of these sources and sinks and study their changes over time.

 

The data provided by the space mission will help to find out information about the processes that regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide and its role in Earth's climate and carbon cycle. The information offered by the mission will help the scientists to reduce uncertainties in predicting future carbon dioxide increases. It will also help to make more accurate climate change predictions. The data from Orbiting Carbon Observatory will also enable the policy makers to take decisions for better quality of life on earth.

 

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory has been developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles. It 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. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will be launched on a Taurus XL rocket into a 438-mile near-polar orbit.