Having lost its OCO (Orbiting Carbon Observatory) in a Taurus XL launch failure in 2009, and two years later losing its GLORY climatology mission on the same vehicle, NASA turned instead to the venerable and reliable Delta II rocket to launch its replacement for OCO. At 0956 on 2 July 2014, a Delta II 7320-10C lifted off from the Vandenberg launch site in California to deliver the OCO-2 spacecraft into a near polar Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit. OCO-2 is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, a human-produced greenhouse gas believed to be a major factor in driving changes in Earth’s climate. The launch was provided by ULA (United Launch Alliance) using one of the few Delta II launch vehicles remaining. The Boeing-Lockheed Martin firm mainly operates Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles in a variety of sizes and variants, all of which are larger than a Delta II.
Delta II does the trick: OCO-2 carbon monitoring satellite is successfully launched for NASA
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