NASA’s OCO-2 Satellite Reaches Operational Orbit

A NASA satellite launched in early July to track carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has reached its operational orbit of 705 kilometers, according to an Aug. 12 press release from Orbital Sciences Corp., the Dulles, Virginia-based builder of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2. OCO-2 was launched July 2 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The observatory, a copy of one destroyed in a 2009 launch failure, was injected into a near-polar orbit some 688 kilometers up and has since been climbing into its intended position at the head of an international ad-hoc constellation of Earth-observing spacecraft known as the A-Train. More

(Source: Space News - Aug 14)