Topic summary
Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) is a NASA-JPL instrument designed to measure carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. The instrument is mounted on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility on board the International Space Station (ISS). OCO-3 was launched as part of CRS-17 on 4 May 2019 at 06:48 UTC. The nominal mission lifetime is ten years.
OCO-3 was assembled using spare materials from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite. Because the OCO-3 instrument is similar to the OCO-2 instrument, it is expected to have similar performance with its measurements used to quantify CO2 to 1 ppm precision or better at 3 Hz.