During the first satellite's launch atop a Taurus-XL in February 2009, the payload fairing failed to separate from around the spacecraft and the rocket did not have sufficient power to enter orbit with its additional mass.

Members of the A-train fly very close together in Sun-synchronous orbit, to make nearly simultaneous measurements of Earth.

[1] Rather than directly measuring concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, OCO-2 records how much of the sunlight reflected off the Earth is absorbed by CO2 molecules in an air column.

[3] In the retrieval algorithm measurements from the three bands are combined to yield column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of carbon dioxide.

The Level 2 product contains estimates of the column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of carbon dioxide, among other parameters such as surface albedo and aerosol content.