* Astronomy

A recent ESA campaign has demonstrated how a technique using lasers could be employed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The campaign supports one of the main objectives of the candidate Earth Explorer A-SCOPE mission.
 A-SCOPE (Advanced Space Carbon and climate Observation of Planet Earth) is one of the six candidate Earth Explorer missions that has just completed assessment study. The mission concept, along with the other five, will be presented to the science community at a User Consultation Meeting in January 2009. Up to three missions will subsequently be selected for the next step of the implementation cycle (feasibility study), leading to the selection of ESAs seventh Earth Explorer mission envisaged to launch in the 2016 timeframe.  

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