NASA’s Greenhouse-Gas (GHG) Satellites

  • Released Thursday, July 18, 2024
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This visualization shows the orbits of the International Space Station (ISS) and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellites. The ISS includes the EMIT and OCO-3 instruments. As the satellites orbit, their respective ground tracks are drawn on the Earth in white and orange to show how global coverage accumulates over time.

NASA’s has two dedicated greenhouse-gas (GHG) satellites making carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3), and a methane (CH4) and CO2 plume mapper (the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission (EMIT). OCO-2 is a polar orbiting satellite, with an overpass time of 1:30 pm and a 16-day revisit, and OCO-3 and EMIT are instruments hosted on the International Space Station (ISS), with the revisit and overpass time determined by the ISS precessing orbit. Combined, OCO-2, OCO-3 and EMIT are helping scientists understand natural carbon sources and sinks and anthropogenic sources of methane from oil, gas, coal and agricultural activities.

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Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, July 18, 2024.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:15 AM EDT.

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