NASA missions at risk under the Trump administration

As part of the budget proposal for NASA submitted earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed cancelling more than 40 missions, including at least 14 Earth science missions.

Agency employees have already been instructed to do the preparatory work for ending these satellite and instrument programs, according to a NASA scientist who spoke with the Bulletin.

These include: Terra, a satellite launched in 1999 that collects data on Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, land, snow and ice, and energy budget; Aura, a satellite launched in 2004 that measures ozone, aerosols, and other trace gases in the atmosphere; and Aqua, a satellite launched in 2002 that collects information on the global water cycle. These satellites are all approaching their end of life and losing them would not be hugely disruptive. Even so, Aura is reportedly in good health and would otherwise continue to collect valuable information until mid-2028, if it is not prematurely terminated.

Other satellites slated for decommissioning are in the prime of life, and turning them off would be enormously wasteful, in addition to severely limiting scientists’ ability to understand the planet.

One of these is the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which measures atmospheric carbon dioxide, and can identify sources and sinks from space. Another is OCO-3—not technically a satellite, but an instrument that has been affixed to the International Space Station—which also measures atmospheric carbon dioxide. Data from these missions has been used in US and UN climate reports. Although the initial development costs of these missions was high—around $750 million, according to David Crisp, a former member of the OCO development team—they cost just $15 million a year to operate. “It’s like buying a car ‘and then running it into a tree after a few years, just to save the price of [a] tank of gas,’” Crisp told the New York Times.

These missions are key to both understanding climate change, and to tracking and enforcing climate action, Gretchen Keppel-Aleks, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan who uses data from OCO-2 and OCO-3 in her research, told the Bulletin.

“Half of the [carbon dioxide] we emit stays in the atmosphere, the other half is going into oceans and ecosystems,” she said. “This mission was designed to track those flows of carbon and to monitor the health of the climate system, the health of forests and farmland and oceans across the planet, and we need that data. We need to understand our home planet.”

In addition to helping scientists better understand the planet, these instruments can also help track and enforce climate action. “[They] can help us to understand whether countries are in compliance with their emission reduction pledges, or whether, even at the facility level, companies are emitting more [carbon dioxide] than they claim to be,” Keppel-Aleks said. “So it’s a mission that can also help with mitigation. And it seems like in the past, when politicians didn’t want to commit to climate action, at least they would sort of acknowledge that we could study the climate system, right? And it seems like both of those are under threat [now].”

Another instrument in the administration’s crosshairs is SAGE 3, short for Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment, which measures stratospheric ozone, aerosols, and water vapor. As is Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, or CYGNSS—eight micro-satellites that measure wind speeds over the oceans, which scientists use to study and forecast hurricanes.

Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, is a joint project of NOAA and NASA that has also been targeted by the Trump administration. Launched in 2015, the satellite monitors solar winds to forecast geomagnetic storms and other space weather events. One may hypothesize, or imagine, that this particular mission is on the chopping block because it includes the word “climate” in its name, but the real value of the satellite is giving advance warning for events that could disrupt power grids, aviation, and telecommunications systems. Without it, according to NOAA, the country’s national and economic security is at risk.

These are the active missions that are on the Trump administration’s chopping block, but the budget proposal also recommends shutting down the development of the next generation of satellites and space instruments for Earth science, including AOS Storm, which would collect information on precipitation, vertical air motions, thin clouds, and aerosols; AOS Sky, which could monitor aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions, storm dynamics, and energy and water cycles; Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer, or PolSIR, which would monitor high altitude ice clouds; and INCUS, short for “INvestigation of Convective UpdraftS,” a mission scheduled for launch in 2027 in which three small satellites will be used to “study why convective storms, heavy precipitation, and clouds occur exactly when and where they form.”

Losing the next generation of satellites and space instruments, in addition to part of the current generation, would be “hugely problematic,” the NASA scientist said.