The journey of a carbon atom: From space, NASA's PACE mission detects carbon in the sky, land and sea

Whether in plants or animals, greenhouse gases or smoke, carbon atoms exist in various compounds as they move through a multitude of pathways within Earth's system. That's why NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission—scheduled to launch in January 2024—was designed to peer down at Earth from space to see those many forms of carbon in a way no other satellite has done before by measuring colors not yet seen from the vantage point of space.