Researchers eager to hitchhike on a military/civilian weather satellite mission had their hopes dashed today. The Department of Defense has dropped a number of climate sensors from a satellite program as part of a restructuring of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The program had suffered schedule delays and billions in cost overruns (Science, 2 June, p. 1296), and the Pentagon says the overall changes will help save about $2.4 billion.
From its 1994 inception, climate scientists viewed NPOESS, meant to be operational until 2018, as a crucial, long- term data source. Among other things, the proposed sensors were to measure solar and Earth electromagnetic radiation. That data, says Berrien Moore of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, would have helped detect long term heating trends vital for continued climate studies. In addition, an aerosol detector would have helped scientists better understand how clouds affect climate change.
Now, says Christopher Ruf, a remote sensing expert at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, scientists must completely overhaul their plans for satellite-based Earth science. "The community was depending on NPOESS" to keep datasets continuous over time, says Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. "A lot of scientists will be disappointed."
One criticism of the estimated $14 billion program was that it tried to do too much. Some have argued that the sensors could work fine on later, separate missions. But Ruf says that having many sensors on one platform opened the door to novel kinds of climate measurements as well as eliminating too much reliance on models to calibrate instruments.
In a 5 June letter to lawmakers, Pentagon officials say that the eliminated instruments could fly "if the sensors are provided from outside the program." But while the instruments "are not [relatively] expensive," says Moore, NASA's depleted budget may make that impossible. "They had to cut something, so they cut climate," he says. Congress will signal its response in pending agency budgets for next year.
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