NASA Awards Launch Services Contract For OCO-2 Mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has selected Orbital Sciences Corp. of
Dulles, Va., to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)
mission. The spacecraft will fly in February 2013 aboard a Taurus XL
3110 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The total cost of the OCO-2 launch services is approximately $70
million.

The estimated cost includes the task ordered launch service for a
Taurus XL 3110 rocket, plus additional services under other contracts
for payload processing, OCO-2 mission unique support, launch vehicle
integration, and tracking, data and telemetry support.

OCO-2 is a NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric
carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced
greenhouse gas driving changes in the Earth's climate. OCO-2 will
provide the first complete picture of human and natural carbon
dioxide sources and "sinks," the places where the gas is pulled out
of the atmosphere and stored. It will map the global geographic
distribution of these sources and sinks and study their changes over
time. The OCO-2 spacecraft will replace OCO-1, lost during a launch
vehicle failure in 2009.

The OCO-2 project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida is responsible for launch vehicle program
management of the Taurus XL 3110 rocket.

For more information about NASA and agency missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Source: NASA