Washington, May 27 (IANS): You may find managing your garden from space a bit sci-fi but this is what NASA is planning to do to protect our earth.
The US space agency is planning to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite next month that will keep a tab on your lawns and gardens to create a global map of carbon sources and carbon sinks.
The job of the satellite is to provide the most detailed map of photosynthetic fluorescence ever created.
Using this data, scientists should be able to estimate how quickly the world’s plants are absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, NASA said in a statement.
During photosynthesis, a plant absorbs light, then re-emits it at a different wavelength. This is known as fluorescence.
A satellite could detect the light emitted by the world’s plants to estimate how much carbon the plants are absorbing.
A detailed map of photosynthetic activity and carbon absorption will better inform conservation efforts, the report added.