Nasa successfully launched a new satellite from California on Thursday that promises scientists their best gauge yet of how the tug of war between international treaties and industrial pollutants is being played out in Earth's atmosphere.
The bus-sized Aura spacecraft, built for Nasa by Northrop Grumman Corp, was launched aboard a Boeing Co Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 6:02 am EDT (1002 GMT).
The $785 million mission will use four instruments aboard the Aura to sweep and scan the atmosphere as it circles the planet in a polar orbit, studying the movement of pollutants and paying particular attention to the stratospheric ozone layer that buffers the Earth from potentially harmful solar radiation.
"Whether you're in Europe getting pollution from the United States or you're in the United States getting pollution from China, it's one atmosphere and we need to look at it from a global sense," said Mark Schoebert, a project scientist from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Among its primary mission objectives, Aura will collect data on "holes" detected in the protective ozone layer at the poles. International treaties ban most uses of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, but Aura should show whether any earlier damage is being reversed.
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