A NASA satellite on a United Launch Alliance rocket was launched from Space Launch Complex-2 here Wednesday, July 2, at 2:56 a.m. PDT. Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander, was the launch decision authority.
The Delta II rocket carried NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2; the second of NASA's five Earth science missions to launch in 2014. OCO-2 is NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the leading human- produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate. OCO-2 will provide a new tool for understanding the human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and the natural "sinks" that absorb carbon dioxide and help control its buildup. The observatory will measure the global geographic distribution of these sources and sinks and study their changes over time
