A special passenger crossed under the Channel this week: the MicroCarb instrument, en-route to be integrated with its satellite platform at RAL Space (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) in Oxfordshire, England.

MicroCarb is a small satellite designed to map sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2)-the most important greenhouse gas - on a global scale, to better understand the impact of CO2 produced by human activity and how this greenhouse gas is released and absorbed.

A French initiative in the frame of the Paris agreement on climate and the COP21, MicroCarb is the first European project to measure CO2 globally. The mission will complement the American and Asian on-going missions and is a precursor for future Copernicus missions such as CO2M.

CNES selected Airbus to develop and build the payload: the MicroCarb instrument, based on a passive spectrometer.

During its five year long mission from its Sun-synchronous orbit, 650km above the Earth, the 190kg satellite will measure the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to better understand the flows between carbon sources and sinks, the carbon cycle of our planet, and improve weather forecasts.

Its dispersive spectrometer instrument will be able to measure atmospheric concentration of CO2 globally with a high degree of precision (on the order of 1 ppm) and with a pixel size of 4.5 km x 9 km.

The payload, designed and produced by Airbus, will be flown on a microsatellite built around CNES's Myriade spacecraft bus and assembled and tested at RAL Space (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) facilities by Thales Alenia Space, on behalf of UKSA, who partnered with the French Space agency.

The instrument, by analyzing the sunlight reflected by Earth, will track the modifications of the solar rays induced by the various molecules met by the photons while passing through the atmosphere. By focusing on the known and precise wavelengths specific to carbon and methane molecules, it is able to identify their presence and measure their concentrations across the globe.

This mission involves the French scientific community studying climatology and the carbon cycle. The MicroCarb mission includes funding from French Investments for the Future Programmes, as well as from the European Union framework programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon 2020.

Related Links
MicroCarb
Carbon Worlds - where graphite, diamond, amorphous, fullerenes meet

Thanks for being there; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5+ Billed Monthly		SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal

Symbiotic CO2 sequestration
Washington DC (SPX) Dec 12, 2022
Photosynthesis is a valuable natural system for sequestering carbon dioxide. However, simply forming biomass does not fully exploit this system. A Chinese team of researchers, whose study is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, has now genetically engineered a microbial community which could serve as a living carbon sink. In this community, carbon dioxide is first converted into sugar by photosynthesis, then the sugar is converted into useful chemicals. Various bacterial strains are used in ... read more

Read more from original source...