A satellite designed to track a greenhouse gas that’s responsible for global warming was launched July 2 – a boon to NASA after two failed bids to launch Earth science spacecraft in 2009 and 2011. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is now a part of the A-Train, a constellation of five other international Earth-observing satellites. Its mission lasts two years and aims to provide the most detailed picture to date of natural sources of carbon dioxide – where it is coming from and where it gets absorbed on the Earth’s surface. Human activities, like the burning of oil and coal, send nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the US space agency.
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