Payload

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory – 3 (OCO-3) is a NASA Earth System Science Program payload designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission concept incorporates the OCO-2 mission’s spare grating spectrometer instrument into an ISS-compatible, external payload for measuring CO2 from the station’s Low Earth Orbit. The payload was transported to ISS via the Space X Dragon and robotically installed on the Japanese Experiment Module’s Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) in 2019. The mission has been collecting science data since August of 2019.

For more information about the International Space Station, please go to ISS.
For more information about the Japanese Experiment Module's Exposed Facility, please go to Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility (JEM-EF)