NASA announced its plans to begin a project that is looking to investigate the global warming effects from a different perspective. In order to do so, the agency will launch the a satellite that will exclusively gather information on this aspect, finding answers to questions like the distribution and source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The costs of the project were calculated at about $278 million.

The launch of the space agency’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) is scheduled for February 23 and it is expected to provide a cosiderable assistance on this environmental issue. It will go around Earth every 16 days, detecting the sources of CO2 and methane, which is another greenhouse gas, by using its spectographs.

According to today’s information, scientists claim that humans emit more than 8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, but only half of that quantity remains there, as the rest is absorbed back into the Earth through what have been named carbon sinks. This will be one of the OCO’s major tasks, as scientists want to better understand the carbon cycle.  

"OCO's unique use of mature technology will enable NASA's first space-based measurements of carbon dioxide with the accuracy and coverage needed to understand how carbon dioxide affects the climate and how in turn the global carbon cycle is affected by changes in the climate," explained Eric Ianson, OCO's program director.

This is not the first effort in this direction, as Japan managed to launch last week the first satellite designed to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide.