NASA To Order Extra Carbon-mapping Instrument for Future Launch

摘要

In a move meant to ensure uninterrupted satellite monitoring of a key global warming culprit through the decade ahead, NASA intends to order an extra flight instrument as it sets out to build a replacement for a carbon observing spacecraft lost last year to a launch mishap.rnThe instrument would be a copy of the high-resolution spectrometer NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is having built for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission the agency plans to launch in 2013 to map atmospheric carbon dioxide, one of several so-called greenhouse gases that trap heat near the Earth's surface. The original OCO craft, built for around $200 million, plummeted into the ocean Feb. 24, 2009, when its Taurus XL launch vehicle's pay-load fairing failed to separate.