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- The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Project (ESSP) mission designed to make precise, time-dependent global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from an Earth orbiting satellite. Unfortunately, on February 24, 2009, OCO failed to reach orbit.
However, in December 2009 the Congressional Conference committee directed NASA to allocate no less than $50M for the 2010 fiscal year (FY10) for the initial costs associated with an OCO replacement. Released on February 1st, 2010, the President's Budget provided adequate funding to support the launch of an OCO re-flight mission (now known as OCO-2). The OCO-2 mission underwent critical design review (CDR) in August 2010 and key design point-C (KDP-C) in September 2010. On October 2010, it began the implementation phase. The new launch date is TBD. An initial launch capability date will be identified at the conclusion of the competitive launch vehicle selection process recently initiated by the LSP (Launch Services Program) on February 3, 2012.
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