On Tuesday, NASA will launch its Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Taurus XL rocket will take off early Tuesday morning, taking along with it, the OCO satellite that is NASA's first satellite designed to gauge CO2 in the atmosphere.

According to the space agency, each year, the burning of fossil fuels emits 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air. The whole of the emitted CO2 does not stay in the atmosphere; about half stays in the air and the other half disappears. It is still unknown, where it all goes?

Scientists hold general opinion that the emitted CO2 is absorbed by the ocean and by plants, but nobody quite knows how and where it happens or what phenomenon takes place. 

The principal investigator for the OCO project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), David Crisp said, "People are asking us to predict how much the climate will change over the next 50 years. How can I tell you how much CO2-induced climate change there's going to be if I don't know how much CO2 there's going to be in the atmosphere?" 

"We're still in a situation where we don't understand the processes that the earth is using to absorb this carbon dioxide. We don't know where they're occurring. We don't know why they're occurring. And we don't know whether they're going to continue," Crisp said.

NASA scientists reported that the OCO satellite will help monitoring CO2 globally. It will record thousands of measurements each day around the different parts of the planet. It will help scientists understand where CO2 is emitted and where it is absorbed. It will help understand better the comings and goings of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas behind the warming of the planet. On the whole, it will provide researchers the better understanding of the climate changes.