Perpustakaan Digital ITB

When a rocket failure saw NASA’s first carbon-monitoring satellite plunge into the ocean in 2009, it was a major blow for climate scientists. Space-based greenhouse-gas monitoring was a promising new frontier — and perhaps an eventual tool for monitoring international climate commitments. It took several years to get a replacement into space, but the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) began taking measurements in 2014. The first major scientific results were published last week in Science (see go.nature.com/2yr8n6a), and there can be no doubt that the mission is delivering. No doubts, either, that the US government should launch a successor.