The satellite, which was the first Nasa had dedicated to measuring the greenhouse gas from space, was expected to transform science’s grasp of the “carbon sinks” in soil, forests and oceans that absorb CO2 and keep much of it out of the atmosphere. Its observations were considered crucial both to predicting future carbon dioxide levels and to developing strategies for protecting the sinks that hold back its damaging effects.

Professor John Burrows, of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and a co-investigator of OCO, said that the information it would have gathered was required urgently to improve understanding of CO2 changes. “Detailed understanding of the surface emissions and uptake of CO2 is key to the accurate prediction of global climate change,” he said.

The average level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 384 parts per million by volume, compared with about 270 in pre-industrial times. This average, however, conceals regional fluctuations that are hard to measure from Earth, and that are therefore poorly understood. Scientists have established that only about 40 per cent of the extra carbon pumped out by humans since the 1750s has remained in the atmosphere. The other 60 per cent has been absorbed, but we understand only partly where and how this has happened.

About half of the absorbed carbon has been soaked up by the oceans, but how the other half has been stored on land remains uncertain. A big concern is that as temperatures rise, sinks may start to release some of their stored CO2 and pump it into the atmosphere, causing a feedback effect that accelerates global warming.

Joanna Haigh, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College, London, said: “At present, when we calculate the carbon input and output of our planet, the numbers don’t quite add up. In other words, there is some uncertainty about some of the major sources, and sinks, of carbon dioxide. This satellite would have helped remove that uncertainty.

“It would also have helped us understand the variability in major carbon sinks such as rainforest, which vary in their CO2 absorption depending on the time of day. Among other things, the data could eventually have been used to monitor how well various regions were observing their international commitments on carbon emissions.”

At present, variations in carbon distribution are monitored from the ground at about 100 sites, but these are too widely spaced to provide high-resolution data. The OCO would have delivered a huge improvement, covering the globe every 16 days and collecting eight million detailed measurements of carbon dioxide concentration.

Scientists hope that Japan’s Ibuki Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite, launched last month, may be able to perform some of the same tasks. The two missions, however, were designed to be complementary, and the smaller amount of data collected will mean that less accurate measurements can be made. Chris Welch, principal lecturer in astronautics at Kingston University, said he expected Nasa to commission a replacement for OCO.

The launch failure is also embarrassing for the US space agency because it comes just weeks after President Obama made space-based climate science the centrepiece of the $1 billion allocated to Nasa in his economic stimulus package.

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