Scientists Urge Upgrade of U.S. Satellite System

This has been known for some time. Many of the satellites presently gathering data have already passed their expected useful lifetimes.

However, it is safe to assume that NASA will be forced to shift more funds in that direction due to public and/or congressional pressure, and the bright side is that better monitoring sensors and systems will be available due to the delay.

There is a positive feedback loop here. The act of getting more equipment into orbit to upgrade the satellites involves releasing more energy into the atmosphere, increasing the frequency and intensity of the hurricane-like events by an amount to be determined by the equipment going into orbit...

The 1991 NOAA12 Satellite continues to put out good APT pictures

How much would it cost if they refocused on spending americans money to monitor conditions that effect americans. Maybe congress needs to get NOAA out of places like the Indian Ocean or Antarctic, and back on the satelittes we need to use for the US.NOAA is not there to do biological studies, but everyone i have ever met doing NOAA research are biologist looking are some deep ocean species of bacteria or shark or such. How much money could we have available if they re-invested those useless proojects back into Atmospherics and Oceanography. NOAA is the FEMA of the science community.

Well, NOAA does stand for the National OCEANIC and Atmospheric Administration, and in NOAA's words "NOAA is a federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere". Now I myself could really care less about deep ocean bacteria at the present, but it is part of the ocean (and sharks are cool!). As for the Indian Ocean and Antarctica, I think they really are part of the bigger picture and bear study so that we may know more of the global weather and climate which happens to pass over the U.S. from time to time.

I won't say we don't need more satellites, because I am a firm believer of the benefits of having our own birds aloft, but NOAA is tasked with quite a lot and tough decisions have to be made about how our limited resources will be used to benefit the most.

Darn let's just observe America. Well all of the world is an interconnected whole. We need to monitor all of the world and space around us to be able to get a handle on weather and solar conditions that affect us.

68torino