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OCO2_Eph·v11·dataset

Where the OCO-2 satellite was in orbit (raw tracking)

OCO-2 Level 0 spacecraft ephemerides V11 (OCO2_Eph) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 0
In plain English

What it measures. Records exactly where the OCO-2 satellite was and how fast it was moving at every point in each orbit. It's essentially the spacecraft's position-and-velocity logbook, not anything about Earth itself.

How it's made. Built from the satellite's own onboard telemetry and an orbit-boundary file, it's a raw bookkeeping product from the OCO-2 carbon-observing mission.

How & where you'd use it. A behind-the-scenes building block: it's needed to pin down exactly where each carbon-dioxide measurement was taken, so most people benefit from it indirectly through the finished CO2 maps rather than using it directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › PLATFORM CHARACTERISTICS › ORBITAL CHARACTERISTICS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-11-30 → 2024-04-01
  • Measured byOCO-2 (OCO-2)
  • Processing levelLevel 0
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

Version 11 is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is the first NASA mission designed to collect space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the precision, resolution, and coverage needed to characterize the processes controlling its buildup in the atmosphere. The OCO-2 project uses the LEOStar-2 spacecraft that carries a single instrument. It incorporates three high-resolution spectrometers that make coincident measurements of reflected sunlight in the near-infrared CO2 near 1.61 and 2.06 micrometers and in molecular oxygen (O2) A-Band at 0.76 micrometers . Each band has 1016 spectral elements.This product contains the position and velocity of the spacecraft for each orbit. It is generated using the following input data:+ APID 20 telemetry+ Orbit Boundary File.It is essential in generating the Geolocations of the science data.

Get the data

oco2_eph_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OCO2_Eph",
    version="11",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.