The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced that it will soon launch a new satellite into orbit. The device will be able to measure global warming's advance around the planet through the quantity of carbon pollution.

NASA attempted to launch a similar satellite into orbit in 2009; however, the rocket carrying the satellite crashed after takeoff, plummeting into the ocean near Antarctica. NASA launched a satellite again in 2011, but that rocket crashed as well.

The replacement satellite cost $468 million and is almost identical to the one lost five years ago. The satellite is designed to study the main driver of climate change emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes, according to The Associated Press. Trees and the ocean absorb some carbon dioxide; however, since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has increased exponentially.

The satellite, called Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, will track the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. NASA spokesman Stephen Cole said the satellite will help scientists "better predict how carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will change in the future, which is a key factor that drives a changing climate," according to The Hill.

Researchers predict that the satellite will bring in a lot of information to study. Scientists unrelated to the project praised the decision to use a rocket already being used, the Delta 2, rather than designing another one, which would have prolonged the launch.

"We don't have time to waste. We need solutions now," said University of the South Pacific-Fiji climate change professor Elisabeth Holland, who helped write the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, according to the AP.

The rocket will be launched Tuesday, and the project is intended to last two years and identify the different ways carbon dioxide is being inhaled on Earth.

"This will allow us to understand what processes are controlling how much carbon is absorbed in a given time and place," Carnegie Institution for Science scientist Anna Michalak, not part of the mission, told the AP in an email.