SpaceX has just launched a critical climate instrument from NASA in space

Image: uncredited / AP / Shutterstock

NASA's carbon detective has left Earth.

SpaceX launched the Carbon Observatory No. 3 (OCO-3) in orbit to the International Space Station (ISS) at 14:48 ET on Saturday morning aboard the company's reliable Falcon 9 rocket. When the NASA cargo arrives at the ISS, the astronauts will use a long robotic arm to fix the instrument the size of a refrigerator on the side of the orbital station.

OCO-3 will monitor the Earth closely, keeping an eye on the planet's carbon dioxide emissions, which are now at their highest level for millions of years.

"Carbon dioxide is the most important gas that man emits into the atmosphere," Annabie Eldering, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist, told OMA-3's Mashable report. "Understanding how this will unfold in the future is essential."

After launching the SpaceX rocket into space, the thruster – the lower part of the rocket containing nine powerful engines – returned to Earth. he landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX now regularly launches rockets on drones and on land. This is a fundamental part of the spaceflight company's business model: reuse expensive rockets instead of letting them crash into the ocean. Earlier this month, SpaceX had taken off an impressive number of thrusters after its massive Falcon Heavy rocket (made up of three rockets tied together) launched an Arab satellite in Earth orbit.

NASA had planned the launch for late April, but had asked SpaceX to delay it until the space agency could fix a food distribution problem on the ISS, currently hosting six astronauts and cosmonauts.

OCO-3 – which can detect concentrations of carbon dioxide on the Earth in less than 1 part per million – has almost failed to gain space. In 2017 and 2018, the Trump administration (which is frankly opposed to climate science) sought to eliminate earth monitoring instruments.

"We learned that OCO-3 was not going to go," Britton Stephens, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NRC) said in an interview. , who worked for the OCO-3 scientific team. "There have been a lot of ups and downs in the project."

But NASA's advocacy and congressional support have kept OCO-3 alive. Now it is in the space.

Image: nasa / JPL / Caltech

OCO-3 will follow in the footsteps of OCO-2 by continuing to accurately monitor locations on Earth (cities and countries) that emit tons of carbon dioxide, and areas that suck or absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (oceans and forests). . The growing log of measurements makes OCO-3 particularly useful for scientists, who need long-term data to track trends and discover new data.

"The longer the discs last, the more important they become," said Pontus Olofsson, an associate professor of research at Boston University, who uses satellites to study the Earth's carbon cycle. "It's like an exponential increase in importance."

These measures are all the more striking today as modern civilization tries to reduce its carbon emissions, which retain heat, and curb the acceleration of global warming. Starting in 2019, the prospect of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above 19th century levels – which would avoid the worst consequences of climate change – seems depressing.

OCO-3 will monitor.