Not Just The OCO Loss - Whole US Fleet Of Climate & Weather Satellites Aging & Infirm

[hatrack]

Shortly after it lifted off in February 2009, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. With that, a $250 million investment became scrap metal on the ocean floor and an effort to begin using satellites to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and trace emission-reduction actions was dealt a huge setback. Scientists say the information the OCO was intended to collect is a crucial piece of the data needed not only by those monitoring the Earth's environment but also by federal officials struggling to understand possible national security implications of those climate changes.

But the OCO's failure highlighted an even broader problem: Understanding climate change requires a breadth of information on variables from atmospheric carbon dioxide to the condition of Arctic ice, and scientists say that satellites are vital for this. Yet at a time where the massive Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica seems intact one day and then collapses into the sea the next, the system of continuous, reliable satellite observation of Earth is at risk, with some aging satellites in dire need of replacement. The OCO was "the only satellite in the world that will do the kind of global collection we need," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the authors of a 2010 report on satellite monitoring of climate change. "And we haven't thought about how to replace it."

EDIT

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission, designed to replace the 13-year-old Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, was delayed from 2010 until at least 2012 during the Bush administration. President Obama's 2011 budget proposes a mid-2013 launch. The Landsat series of Earth observation satellites, a nearly 40-year-old mission run by the U.S. Geological Survey, had its next satellite delayed from this year, with the latest plans estimating a 2012 launch. This mission watches rising sea levels, glacial movement and coral reef decline, and it charts environmental conditions for military and intelligence uses. But one of its two satellites is experiencing degraded image quality and the other has been up since 1984, far past its life expectancy. The Hydros mission, to measure soil moisture and permafrost, and to improve forecasting of droughts and floods, which was to have been launched this month, was canceled altogether. The Obama administration has proposed a 2014 launch for a satellite to measure soil moisture.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/24/AR2011012405139.html

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Another legacy of the Bu**sh** maladministration, which we will be paying for for years ... nt

[damntexdem]

2. Let's hope other nations start acting and putting up satellites to track climate.

I don't trust the ability or willingness of the U.S. to stay in that game.

[pscot]

3. And the money to replace them

will have to originate in the House of Representatives.

[joshcryer]

4. No matter, authorization acts are not the same as appropriations.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3729

See SEC. 101. FISCAL YEAR 2011.

The Senate can and will continue to fund subsection 3-A and subsection 6, which covers Earth sciences and space probes (along with NOAA, etc).

But yes, Bush did a good job keeping Earth science out of our programs.