Is it legal to pull the plug on a fully paid-for, functioning NASA satellite that’s the gold standard for monitoring global carbon? That’s the question now ringing out through the halls of Washington and the scientific community, as Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is suddenly and politically face-met with an end to its mission despite ongoing technical prowess and singular contributions to climate science.
Released in 2014 after its predecessor was unable to achieve orbit, OCO-2 soon exceeded expectations. The instrument complement of the satellite, a set of three high-resolution grating spectrometers, is designed to detect sunlight reflected by the Earth’s surface in three narrow wavelength bands, each sensitive to a different gas: weak CO2, strong CO2, and molecular oxygen. By monitoring the patterns of absorption in this reflected light over a stunning 17,500 finely separated color bands OCO-2 can discern atmospheric carbon dioxide with a resolution and precision no earlier mission could achieve. The detectors, cooled to -120°C by an onboard cryocooler, guarantee that even the weakest spectral fingerprints are recorded without interference, making the satellite a technological gem of space-based greenhouse gas observation OCO-2 spectrometer instrument design specifications.
“OCO-2 collects a great number of high-resolution measurements, which provides a greater spatial distribution of CO2 over the entire globe; in short, a bigger, clearer, more complete picture of global CO2,” explains NASA. Ground-based networks combined with this data have become the foundation of global carbon cycle science, underpinning everything from Paris Agreement stocktakes to real-time drought watches and crop yield predictions. As NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains, “The mission has also uncovered insights into CO2 emissions from cities, and contributes data supporting the Paris Agreement. As an unexpected bonus, OCO-2 has even been able to track growing seasons and crops by measuring the ‘glow’ plants emit when they photosynthesize.”
This “glow,” or solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), has unlocked new frontiers of agricultural science and ecosystem monitoring. The satellite’s capability to map photosynthesis around the world gives early warning of drought, optimizes agricultural practices, and even aids food security programs in developing countries. High-resolution SIF information from OCO-2 and its ISS-based counterpart, OCO-3, have exposed critical adaptive responses of vegetation to climate extremes, for example, the 2022 Yangtze River drought, and are now key to understanding ecosystem resilience vegetation response of drought in the Yangtze River Basin.
Still, the Trump administration has ordered NASA to prepare termination plans for OCO-2 and OCO-3. The action has sparked hot controversy not just about the legality Congress has already approved funding for fiscal year 2025 but also about cancelling a mission that only costs $15 million annually to operate, after taxpayers spent some $750 million on its design, construction, and launch. “Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data,” explained David Crisp, the retired NASA scientist who had a hand in designing the instruments.
It’s not just theoretical. As Representative Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, cautioned, Congress has the power of the purse, not Trump or Vought. Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters. The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds. This is illegal.
The technical and scientific ramifications are just as dire. OCO-2 data are now the world standard for high-resolution atmospheric CO2, with absolute average biases less than or equal to 0.20 parts per million or less relative to the gold-standard TCCON ground network. Its bias-corrected, day-averaged daily data streams have facilitated near-instantaneous detection of emission changes, e.g., those due to COVID-19 lockdowns, and have provided new insights into how carbon sinks forests, oceans, soils are responding to climate change. Recent research has indicated that global net land carbon sinks hit record lows in 2023, with OCO-2 data representing the decisive proof for these observations drop of the carbon sink on land in 2023.
The current legal fight is accompanied by a concurrent hunt for private financing. NASA has put out notices to universities and firms to assume the responsibility of operating the OCO-3 instrument aboard the ISS, potentially ushering in a new generation of public-private collaborations in the field of Earth observation. However, as a warning issued by Anna Michalak of Carnegie Science and Stanford University, Those efforts would not be possible without this underlying investment from public funding.
If OCO-2 is retired, the satellite will disintegrate in Earth’s atmosphere, and the planet will be losing not only a scientific tool, but an essential pillar of climate policy and science. The technical, legal, and political decision will have far-reaching implications, far beyond the mission control at NASA.
