The lofty peak of Mount St. Helens in Washington state dominated the landscape in this view from NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory during one of the ASCENDS II atmospheric sampling instrument validation flights.
Mission: Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS II)
The lofty peak of Mount St. Helens in Washington state dominated the landscape in this view from NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory during one of the ASCENDS II atmospheric sampling instrument validation flights. The systems used lasers to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the air between the instrument and Earth’s surface. Existing satellites use reflected sunlight to gauge carbon dioxide, so they only work in daylight conditions. Carbon dioxide is considered an important contributor to global warming, so NASA wants to make more measurements under a wider set of conditions.July 2011
NSERC / Emily Schaller