Climate satellite plunges into sea
March 6, 2011, Sunday
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A ROCKET glitch sent a NASA global warming satellite to the bottom of the sea on Friday, a US$424 million debacle that couldn't have come at a worse time for the space agency and its efforts to understand climate change.
It was the second time in two years that a satellite fell back to Earth.
Years of belt-tightening have left NASA's Earth-watching system in sorry shape, according to many scientists.
And any money for new environmental satellites will have to survive budget cuts, global warming politics and, now, doubts on Capitol Hill about the space agency's competence.
The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and plummeted to the southern Pacific several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring probe in 2009 with the same type of rocket, and engineers thought they had fixed the problem.
"It's more than embarrassing," said Syracuse University public policy professor Henry Lambright. "Something was missed in the first investigation and the work that went on afterward."
Lambright warned that the back-to-back fiascos could have political repercussions, giving Republicans and climate-change skeptics more ammunition to question whether "this is a good way to spend taxpayers' money for rockets to fail and for a purpose they find suspect."
NASA's environmental division is getting used to failure, cuts and criticism.
In 2007, a National Academies of Science panel said that research and purchasing for NASA Earth sciences had decreased 30 percent over six years and that the space agency's climate-monitoring system was at "risk of collapse."
Then, last month, the Obama administration canceled two major satellite proposals to save money.
Also, the Republican-controlled House has sliced US$600 million from NASA in its continuing spending bill, and some GOP members do not believe the evidence of man-made global warming.
Thirteen NASA Earth-observing satellites remain up there, and nearly all of them are in their sunset years.
"Many of the key observations for climate studies are simply not being made," Harvard Earth sciences professor James Anderson said. "This is the nadir of climate studies since I've been working in this area for 40 years."
It was the second time in two years that a satellite fell back to Earth.
Years of belt-tightening have left NASA's Earth-watching system in sorry shape, according to many scientists.
And any money for new environmental satellites will have to survive budget cuts, global warming politics and, now, doubts on Capitol Hill about the space agency's competence.
The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and plummeted to the southern Pacific several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring probe in 2009 with the same type of rocket, and engineers thought they had fixed the problem.
"It's more than embarrassing," said Syracuse University public policy professor Henry Lambright. "Something was missed in the first investigation and the work that went on afterward."
Lambright warned that the back-to-back fiascos could have political repercussions, giving Republicans and climate-change skeptics more ammunition to question whether "this is a good way to spend taxpayers' money for rockets to fail and for a purpose they find suspect."
NASA's environmental division is getting used to failure, cuts and criticism.
In 2007, a National Academies of Science panel said that research and purchasing for NASA Earth sciences had decreased 30 percent over six years and that the space agency's climate-monitoring system was at "risk of collapse."
Then, last month, the Obama administration canceled two major satellite proposals to save money.
Also, the Republican-controlled House has sliced US$600 million from NASA in its continuing spending bill, and some GOP members do not believe the evidence of man-made global warming.
Thirteen NASA Earth-observing satellites remain up there, and nearly all of them are in their sunset years.
"Many of the key observations for climate studies are simply not being made," Harvard Earth sciences professor James Anderson said. "This is the nadir of climate studies since I've been working in this area for 40 years."
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