WASHINGTON -- A Russian satellite hurled into orbit carries NASA gear to monitor global warming trends and keep an eye on ozone destruction in Earth's stratosphere.

NASA and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (RASA) will share data from the first SAGE III instrument. Scientists will use this data to study human-derived and natural processes that contribute to environmental changes, primarily global warming and the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere.

SAGE III is the fifth in a family of Earth-staring sensors NASA has developed and flown over the past 20 years.

The first was the Stratospheric Aerosol Measurement I flown on the joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in 1975. The ASTP was the first joint docking of piloted craft from the United States and the former Soviet Union.

From the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, various generations of similar sensors have been placed into Earth orbit.

The Zenit-2 rocketed into space a cluster of other payloads.

Also boosted spaceward was Russia's Meteor 3M-N1, an advanced weather satellite, as well as Kompass, a mission that delves into the prospect of predicting earthquakes.

Pakistan's BADR-B, built with British help, is an Earth imagery satellite. MAROC-TUBSAT was built by the Technical University of Berlin for Morocco. It also totes an imager and an experimental communications package.

Lastly, a payload simply tagged "Reflector", was built by NII KP in Russia for the U.S. Air Force. The Reflector is tasked to monitor space debris.

Russia's NII KP design bureau sports a long history of building precision gyroscopes for an array of military and civilian science satellites, including hardware for the International Space Station.