Costs for polar-orbiting weather satellites climb again

Fed up with an escalating price-tag and schedule delays on the next-generation polar-orbiting weather satellite system, Senate appropriators have ordered that the development of weather satellites—and the $1.6 billion budgeted for it—be moved from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to NASA. In the report that accompanied the Senate bill, the Appropriations subcommittee, chaired by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), asserted that removing NOAA as “middle brokers” in the development and acquisition of weather satellites will save $117 million in fiscal year 2013. Noting that NASA has long managed the acquisition contracts for NOAA satellites, the report said the additional layer of bureaucracy that NOAA creates “only adds to the communication disconnect and complicates the decision-making process.” Under the proposed reorganization, the satellites would become NOAA’s responsibility once they are in orbit and their systems checked out, the committee report said.

Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA deputy administrator, told members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on 27 June that the White House is carefully considering whether to go along with the Senate bill’s instructions. A House-passed version of the appropriations bill has no comparable provision. Assuming the full Senate approves the bill, the two versions will be reconciled by a House–Senate conference committee this autumn or later.

Mikulski’s proposal would be the latest shakeup in the nearly two-decade-old multiagency struggle to develop and deploy new polar-orbiting satellites. The troubles date to 1994, when as an economizing step that was supposed to save $1.3 billion, President Bill Clinton ordered the Department of Defense and NOAA to combine what were then separate polar-orbiting satellite programs. The combined program was estimated to cost $6.5 billion over 24 years and consist of six satellites, the first due for launch in 2008. But after billions of dollars were spent with no satellites to show, and amid interagency squabbles over the number and types of sensors to carry aboard, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy separated the military and civilian programs again in 2010 (see Physics Today, November 2011, page 28 ).

Downsized program

Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), who chaired a 27 June hearing on the status of the civilian program known as the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), complained that its cost had climbed by $1 billion just since the previous hearing on the program last fall, and the schedule had slipped another three months. The JPSS now consists of just two operational satellites, the first one to be launched in March 2017. A third satellite, a precursor known as Suomi NPP, was launched in October 2011. Its mission is to test the five instruments that will be flown on the operational polar orbiters. But it will also supply weather-forecasting data for as long as it holds up; NOAA has projected a five-year lifetime, though NASA engineers have warned it may lose capabilities after three. Once Suomi NPP fails, NOAA officials expect that the quality of three- to seven-day weather forecasts will deteriorate from their current level.

The life-cycle cost estimate for the JPSS program has ballooned to $14.6 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—$1.7 billion above the life-cycle cost cap of $12.9 billion that the White House imposed in 2010. Sullivan assured the lawmakers that NOAA can complete the JPSS program in its entirety without exceeding the cap, including placing into orbit several instruments that had initially been planned for the weather satellites. Those sensors are now to be tacked onto unspecified future launch vehicles.

David Powner, director of information technology management issues at GAO, said NOAA may still have to jettison some of the five instruments, eliminate an associated ground monitoring station, or forego providing new JPSS data-processing facilities for the DOD in order to stay within the cap. The loss of additional instruments, he warned, will hinder efforts by climatologists and meteorologists to understand changes in Earth’s ozone coverage and radiation budget.

Each of the instruments aboard the precursor satellite has been commissioned and is working properly, Sullivan said. Those instruments are a microwave radiometer; a Michelson interferometer to monitor moisture and pressure; imaging spectrometers to measure ozone levels; a 22-band radiometer to collect IR and visible-light data to observe wildfires, ice movement, and changes in landforms; and a system to measure the effect of clouds on Earth’s energy balance, one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate modeling.