Observatories

History

The original Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) mission. It was created as NASA's first dedicated mission for making precise, time-dependent global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) from an Earth orbiting satellite. OCO was launched on February 24, 2009 OCO but did not reach orbit due to failure of the separation of the launch vehicle payload fairing. This failure was later traced to the presence of fraudulent materials in the fairing separation device.

On March 1, 2010 NASA initiated a OCO re-flight mission (OCO-2). 4 1/2 years after the failure of the OCO launch, OCO-2 was launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base on July 2, 2014 using one of the three remaining United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II 7310-10C rockets.

To reduce the time to launch and minimize cost, the design of the OCO-2 instrument and spacecraft were essentially copies of the original OCO. For the past 12 years OCO-2 has been gathering data almost continuously. Observations from OCO-2 are collected on the sunlit side of the orbit at the same time of day (near 1:30 PM local) as OCO-2 is operating in a 'sun synchronous' orbit.

On December 22, 2015 NASA initiated the OCO-3 mission - an instrument destined for the International Space Station (ISS). On May 4, 2019, OCO-3 was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket. The OCO-2 flight spare spectrometers, lightly updated, were used in OCO-3.

The OCO-3 measurements are unique from OCO-2 in two ways. First, since the ISS is operating in a 'precession orbit', OCO-3 data is collected at different times of the day from dawn to dusk but the orbit only goes to ±51.6° latitude and no observations are collected poleward of the orbit. Second, an agile two-axis Pointing Mirror Assembly (PMA) allows for collection of Snapshot Area Maps (SAMs) approximately 80 km x 80 km in size. The SAMs provide for regional examination of areas of interests like cities and agriculture zones.

In the fall of 2026, the California Institute of Technology assumed responsibility for operations and financial support of the Orbiting Carbon Observatories.