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Published online 15 April 2009 | Nature 458, 814-815 (2009) | doi:10.1038/458814a

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NASA ponders 'carbon copy' of crashed mission

Replica spacecraft for monitoring carbon dioxide could fly in a couple of years if money can be found.

Since the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the ocean minutes after its 24 February launch, researchers at NASA and elsewhere have been working on how else they might get the data on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that the mission was meant to collect.

Within a week of losing the satellite, NASA, which spent US$278 million and seven years developing OCO, put together a committee of two dozen climate scientists to weigh up various options.

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  • yeah,i think failures are tolerable in sciences.

    • 24 Apr, 2009
    • Posted by: Kunpeng Ge