 |
 |
||
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
Planetary News: Space Policy (2008)Administration's Budget Request Benefits Earth-Observing AgenciesBy Amir AlexanderFebruary 7, 2008
NASA was not the only agency to benefit from the increased emphasis on Earth observations in the Administration's budget request for 2009. NOAA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is also charged with monitoring Earth from space, and has its own fleet of satellites in orbit collecting and disseminating scientific data. Like NASA, NOAA also saw a significant rise in funds requested to support its satellite operations, bringing the agency's total budget to $4.1 billion – the highest amount ever. Specifically, $74 million of the total are targeted at restoring some of the Earth-monitoring instruments that were cut from the troubled NPOESS project. NPOESS, the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, is a joint project of NOAA and the Department of Defense dating back to the 1990's. Originally designed as a system of six satellites, the first of which was to launch in 2009, the project has suffered from cost overruns and severe delays. Following a review in 2006, Pentagon managers cut the number of NPOESS satellites to four, pushed the initial launch date to 2013, and eliminated numerous instruments that NOAA considered crucial. Support for NOAA's position came from the National Research Council (NRC), which in January 2007 published a report pointing out that the number of instruments observing Earth from space will plummet in the next few years. If no action was taken, the report warned, scientists' ability to monitor Earth processes such as global warming will be drastically reduced. The report pointed specifically to five instruments that were cut from the NPOESS project, arguing that they were essential for effective Earth monitoring. Responding to the NRC's report, the budgetary request for NOAA seeks to restore at least three of these instruments. The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS-Limb), designed to study the vertical distribution of ozone in the atmosphere, is to be completed and launched in 2010 on a satellite called NPP – the NPOESS Preparatory Project. The CERES instrument, built to measure Earth's radiation "budget," is already completed and is now also scheduled to fly on NPP, with a similar instrument scheduled to for the first NPOESS satellite in 2013.The development of a third instrument, measuring the amount of solar radiation outside Earth's atmosphere, will now proceed, and efforts will continue to find a satellite to carry it into orbit. Two additional instruments, designed to measure sea surface temperatures and wind directions over the oceans remain unfunded in this budget request. In addition to the these instruments, NOAA also received continued funding for its GOES Geostationary Satellite System. Most of the funds went to the GOES-R series currently under development, which received $242.2 million. The "Polar-Orbiting Satellite System" (POES) received $48.9 million towards the 2009 launch of its last satellite, the NOAA N-Prime. The third U.S. agency operating Earth-observing satellites, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), saw its overall budget cut by $38 million in the Administration's request, bringing it down to $968.5 million. Earth-monitoring projects, however, were spared, and an additional $2 million were requested for the USGS Land Remote Sensing program that runs the successful Landsat satellite series. Did you like this article? Send
it to a friend or share it at:
Slashdot - Digg this - Reddit - Del.icio.us - Newsvine - NowPublic
|
||||||
 |
 |
||||||
[ what is this? ]