NASA: U.S. carbon-sniffing satellite sleuth arrives at launch site

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate, has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final launch preparations, NASA reported on Wednesday.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory arrived Tuesday at its launch site on California's central coast after completing a cross-country trip by truck from its manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft will be integrated onto an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket in preparation for its planned January 2009 launch.

"The observatory will help solve some of the lingering mysteries in our understanding of Earth's carbon cycle and its primary atmospheric component, carbon dioxide, a chemical compound that is produced both naturally and through human activities," said NASA in a press release on Wednesday.

The observatory will launch into a 438-mile (705-km) near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit inclined 98.2 degrees to Earth's equator, mapping the globe once every 16 days. The mission is designed to last two years.

The observatory's space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide will have the precision, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions, said NASA.

It will show the places where carbon dioxides are absorbed, known as "sinks," at regional scales everywhere on Earth. Its data will reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions.