(Photo: Wired Magazine)From Wired News:
Richard Branson has slapped the Virgin name on everything from airlines and space travel to record stores and comic books, and now he wants to add scientific research into global climate change.
The flamboyant British entrepreneur says his fledgling Virgin Galactic enterprise will use the Space Ship Two and White Knight Two (pictured) vehicles to carry research equipment to the highest levels of the atmosphere for a research project planned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The instruments will provide vast quantities of data regarding atmospheric conditions, particularly the level of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, and allow the agency to calibrate measurements made by satellites.
"We need data and observations to understand how our climate changes," Conrad Lautenbacher, the agency's administrator, said in a statement. "This affords us a new and unique opportunity to gather samples and measurements at much higher altitudes than we can usually achieve."
Such a partnership would solve one of the NOAA's biggest challenges with atmospheric research -- it doesn't have anything capable of reaching such lofty altitudes.
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