re: #304 RogueOne

The Future of Polar-orbiting Satellites:

On May 5, 1994, President Clinton made the landmark decision to merge the nation’s military and civil operational meteorological satellite systems into a single, national system capable of satisfying both civil and national security requirements for space-based remotely sensed environmental data. Convergence of these programs is the most significant change in U.S. operational remote sensing since the launch of the first weather satellite in April 1960.

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The President’s FY2011 budget takes significant new steps. The White House has announced that NOAA and the Air Force will no longer continue to jointly procure the polar-orbiting satellite system called NPOESS. This decision is in the best interest of the American public to preserve critical operational weather and climate observations into the future.

The three agencies (DOD, NOAA and NASA) have and will continue to partner to ensure a successful way forward for the respective programs, while utilizing international partnerships to sustain and enhance weather and climate observation from space.

The major challenge of NPOESS was jointly executing the program between three agencies of different size with divergent objectives and different acquisition procedures. The new system will resolve this challenge by splitting the procurements. NOAA and NASA will take primary responsibility for the afternoon orbit, and DOD will take primary responsibility for the morning orbit. The agencies will continue to partner in those areas that have been successful in the past, such as a shared ground system. The restructured programs will also eliminate the NPOESS tri-agency structure that that has made management and oversight difficult, contributing to the poor performance of the program.
NOAA and the Air Force have already begun to move into a transition period during which the current joint procurement will end. A detailed plan for this transition period will be available in a few weeks. The agencies will continue a successful relationship that that they have developed for their polar and geostationary satellite programs to date. NOAA’s portion will notionally be named the “Joint Polar Satellite System” (JPSS) and will consist of platforms based on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite.

In addition, these Agencies have a strong partnership with Europe through the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) that will continue to be a cornerstone of our polar-orbiting constellation, and will ensure our ability to provide continuous measurements.

These changes to the NPOESS program will better ensure continuity of crucial civil climate and weather data in the future. Decisions on future satellite programs will be made to ensure the best plan for continuity of data.

While the Air Force continues to have remaining Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) polar-orbiting satellites available for launch for the next few years, NOAA launched its final polar-orbiting satellite in February 2009. Given that weather forecasters and climate scientists rely on the data from NOAA’s current on-orbit assets, efforts will focus development of the first of the JPSS platforms on ensuring both short- and long-term continuity in crucial climate and weather data.

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By cutting the NOAA portion of the project, the NASA and DoD portion will be affected as well.

The JPSS is so we can have polar orbiting weather satellites through 2024.

That’s too forward looking for some people, I guess.