Latest news with #OrbitingCarbonObservatory
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Science
- News.com.au
Donald Trump pushes to shut down climate data-collecting NASA satellites
Donald Trump's administration is moving to shut down two key NASA satellite missions which monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases, in its latest hit to climate science. The missions – which include a freeflying satellite known as OCO-2 and an instrument attached to the International Space Station known as OCO-3 – measure carbon dioxide levels and crop growth around the world, providing critical information to scientists and farmers. But funding for the missions, collectively known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, has been scrapped under the President's budget request for fiscal year 2026, starting in October. NASA told AP the missions were being terminated 'to align with the President's agenda and budget priorities'. If decommissioned, OCO-3, would be switched off and remain mounted to the International Space Station. However, freeflying OCO-2 – which already has enough fuel to last through 20240 according to CNN– would be relocated to a lower orbit, where it would remain for years before it eventually burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere. The US Republican-controlled Congress is yet to make a decision on Mr Trump's budget request but David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist who managed the mission, has confirmed the decommissioning planning for both missions is already underway. Dr Crisp told NPR that NASA employees are working on 'Phase F' plans – where teams work out how to end a mission. 'What I have heard is direct communications from people who were making those plans, who weren't allowed to tell me that that's what they were told to do. But they were allowed to ask me questions,' he told the outlet. Other sources also confirmed the decommissioning planning to CNN. Dr Crisp said the missions are 'national assets' and are more accurate than any other systems. He said they have led scientists to discover the Amazon rainforest emits more carbon dioxide than it absorbs and can help monitor drought by detecting the 'glow' of photosynthesis in plants. 'This is really critical. We're learning so much about this rapidly changing planet,' he told AP. Anna Michalak, a climate researcher at Carnegie Science and Stanford University, also pointed out the missions have helped other countries. 'It's not just that these are the only two NASA-funded missions,' she told CNN. 'It's that these have been the most impressive, inspirational missions in this space, globally, period.' Dr Crisp is hoping Congress will vote to maintain funding. However, with Congress currently in recess, a budget may not be adopted before the new fiscal year. In the meantime, the former NASA scientist is among those calling on outside partners, including from overseas, to fund OCO-3, attached to the International Space Station. 'We're going out to billionaires. We're going out to foundations,' he told AP. 'But … it's a really, really bad idea to try and push it off onto private industry or private individuals or private donors. It just doesn't make sense.' A NASA spokesperson told CNN if Mr Trump's proposed budget passes, it 'will be implemented upon the start of the next fiscal year'. US to rewrite its past national climate reports The news comes as the Trump administration announced last week it is revising past editions of the nation's premier climate report. The decision, announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on CNN, followed the government's revocation of the Endangerment Finding, a scientific determination that underpins a host of regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Asked why previous editions of the National Climate Assessment were no longer available online, former fracking company CEO Mr Wright told the network: 'Because we're reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those.' First published in 2000, the National Climate Assessment has long been viewed as a cornerstone of the US government's understanding of climate science, synthesising input from federal agencies and hundreds of external experts. Previous editions warned in stark terms of mounting risks to America's economy, infrastructure, and public health if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. But in April, the administration moved to dismiss the hundreds of scientists working on the sixth edition. Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, the government is legally obligated to deliver the climate assessment to Congress and the president. Mr Trump's administration and Congress have pressed forward with their pro-fossil fuel agenda – dismantling clean energy tax credits through the so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' and opening more ecologically sensitive lands to drilling. Last month's proposed revocation of the Endangerment Finding by the Environmental Protection Agency was accompanied by the release of a new climate study from the Department of Energy, authored by climate change contrarians. The study questioned whether heat records are truly increasing and whether extreme weather is worsening. It also misrepresented the work of cited climate scientists, according to several who spoke to AFP, and suggested that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide could be a net benefit for agriculture.
National Observer
3 days ago
- Politics
- National Observer
Trump's latest attack on carbon research will hamper Canadian scientists
In early August, Debra Wunch, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Toronto, got wind that the Trump administration might destroy the NASA satellite that underpins her career. "It's devastating," said Wunch, who studies how many greenhouse gases Toronto emits and the impact of boreal forests on the carbon cycle. "These satellites have been a fundamental part of my career since 2007 — I've been working with these data for a very long time." The satellite, OCO-2, is part of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) project and measures where on the Earth's surface carbon dioxide is being emitted or absorbed. The data are detailed enough that researchers can pinpoint carbon dioxide emissions from a specific source, such as a power plant or wildfire, and track changes in the growing season. The data are widely used by scientists, farmers and the fossil fuel industry. Last week, NPR reported that the Trump administration asked employees at NASA to create plans to end at least two satellite missions, including the OCO project, as part of Trump's proposed budget cuts. If those plans go through — Trump's budget needs to be approved by Congress, which isn't guaranteed — the OCO-2 satellite will be destroyed when it burns up re-entering the atmosphere after being abandoned. Although budget cuts are being used to justify the move, the Trump administration has made similar efforts to dismantle other programs dedicated to monitoring climate change. Soon after taking office, he forced US government researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to stop all collaboration with "foreign nationals" — a move critics decried as a "body blow to climate research." The administration has also stopped tracking the cost of climate-related disasters, and is pushing the country's Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate the legal basis for some of the US's key climate rules — with "indispensible" help from climate denying Canadian economist Ross McKitrick — among dozens of other moves to roll back climate efforts. Russ Vought, the director of the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget — the office responsible for drafting the White House's budget proposal — was a co-author of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. In that document, he wrote that"the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding." The Trump administration wants to eliminate a NASA satellite mission that pinpoints carbon dioxide emissions from a specific source, such as a power plant or wildfire, and track changes in the growing season. The OCO project also operates a second device on the International Space Station, OCO-3. Last month, NASA announced it is accepting proposals from companies and universities that want to cover the machine's operating costs. The devices are still functional, and an official review by NASA in 2023 recommended continuing the mission for at least three more years. It concluded the satellite is of "high utility" because it helps agencies track industrial emissions, the planet's carbon cycle and to monitor compliance with international climate commitments. Operating both devices costs about $15 million a year — roughly two per cent of the $750 million it cost NASA to build them, David Crisp, the NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until 2022, told NPR. Wunch is one of thousands of researchers, including several Canadians, who have worked on the OCO or rely on data collected by the devices to better understand the climate crisis and whether our efforts to fight it are working. OCO-2 was the first satellite dedicated to making CO2 measurements with enough accuracy and precision to answer scientific questions about the carbon cycle, said Ray Nassar, a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada who was the first person to use OCO-2 data to calculate emissions specific to coal-fired power plants in 2017. "OCO-2 was extremely important in giving us the first observations of that kind that could do that," he said. "They're the leading satellites making this type of measurement, and there's already been a significant investment to get them up in space. To just turn them off at this point, we would lose a valuable source of data" The satellite circles the Earth from south to north, monitoring CO2 in the atmosphere in narrow bands roughly one kilometer wide. This gives researchers enough precision to identify where the gas is being emitted or absorbed, a level of detail unmatched by any other satellites currently in orbit. "Because it's measuring carbon dioxide all around the world, we're able to get more of an idea of regionally, where carbon is being absorbed and where it's being emitted," said Brendan Bryne, a Canadian researcher who worked on the OCO project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab between 2018 and 2024. Japan has three CO2-measuring satellites in orbit, but they scan a bigger area than the OCO ones. The European Space Agency is planning to send three satellites that can collect similar data on CO2 emissions into space late next year. OCO-2 and OCO-3 can also measure a specific type of photon that plants release during photosynthesis, which researchers can use to track changes in the growing season, as well as when boreal forests start re-absorbing carbon after a wildfire. Losing the satellites will prevent her and other researchers from conducting most of this type of research, said Wunch. "Without commenting on a specific policy decision by any country, turning off satellites that are delivering valuable data is generally a bad thing to do," said Nassar. Simon Donner, a climate scientist at the University of British Columbia, wrote in an email that Trump's proposal is "a foolish decision for financial reasons alone. The vast majority of the cost of satellites is in their construction and launch. Once they are in space, it is relatively cheap to keep them operating, and you get downstream economic benefits from the use of the data." Canada's National Observer reached out to NASA asking about the proposed cuts, but didn't receive a response. Environment and Climate Change Canada couldn't provide a response by deadline to a question about whether Canada could take over the project's operational costs, if the US were willing to transfer the mission. Wunch was clear about the toll that could come if NASA is forced to abandon the OCO mission: "I'm just very sad," she said.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
The perfectly fine, already-paid-for satellites Trump wants to destroy in a fiery atmospheric reentry
NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside of the agency told CNN. The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth's atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science. President Donald Trump's budget proposal takes a hatchet to NASA's Earth science spending for fiscal year 2026, which begins in October. The greenhouse gas monitoring missions, known collectively as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, are some of the many Earth science casualties in the proposal. Other satellites and instruments on the chopping block include the long-lived Aqua satellite, which carries a high-resolution Earth imaging instrument called MODIS, that among other uses, helps detect wildfires worldwide. Also at risk are the Terra and Aura missions, each of which have climate science applications, and planned satellites that would precisely measure solar radiation, heavy precipitation and clouds. While the Trump administration says it is looking to end the OCO and other missions to cut costs, scientists involved in the projects see an anti-climate science pattern at work. Congress is still considering Trump's budget request and may reject some, or all, of the Earth science cuts, but NASA is proceeding as if the White House spending blueprint will be implemented as-written. David Crisp, a former NASA scientist who worked on the OCO missions and managed them until he retired in 2022, confirmed the decommissioning planning for OCO-2 and OCO-3. Other sources, including one NASA employee, also confirmed this plan, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't approved to discuss the issue. NASA calls a mission's closeout phase — the period when the program team works out how to end it — 'Phase F.' The Phase F state of planning for the OCO missions was first reported by NPR. In response to questions from CNN, a NASA spokesperson pointed to Trump's budget request. 'It would not be appropriate for us to comment at this time as the budget process is still happening. Should the budget pass as proposed — it still needs to make its way through Congress — this will be implemented upon the start of the next fiscal year.' Together, the OCO-2, a freestanding satellite, and OCO-3, which is mounted on the International Space Station, measure the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, specifically sniffing out climate pollution. The OCO missions are particularly useful for tracking fossil fuel and ecosystem-related emissions, scientists told CNN. The instruments also help scientists monitor plant productivity — critical for farmers and the researchers studying forest loss. While OCO-3 could be switched off and remain attached to the ISS, perhaps to be turned on again in the future, the decommissioning process for OCO-2 is far more complicated — and fiery. The satellite would be moved into a much lower orbit and exist there as space junk for years until it burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. The purposeful abandonment or destruction of multimillion-dollar satellites and instruments is essentially unprecedented, scientists told CNN. They are particularly baffled by the decision to destroy OCO-2, given it already has enough fuel on it to last through 2040. The OCO missions are still functioning and are thought to have many years left of data-gathering, in addition to the fuel onboard, which has already been bought by American taxpayers. It is not business as usual to shut off working satellites without conducting a comprehensive review, sources told CNN, nor is it typical to kill functional spacecraft that can cost billions to put into space in the first place. 'The reality is that as long as these instruments are producing high-quality data, it's essentially unheard of to decommission the satellites, because keeping them going is so cheap compared to building them and launching them in the first place,' Anna Michalak, a climate researcher at Carnegie Science and Stanford University who works with greenhouse gas emissions data, told CNN. The OCO missions are important for other countries, too, since they also use the data, Michalak said: 'It's not just that these are the only two NASA-funded missions. It's that these have been the most impactful missions in this space, globally, period.' Losing the OCO missions would hurt US leadership in climate science and create a multiyear gap in space-based climate pollution measurements, said Ben Poulter of Spark Climate Solutions, a nonprofit focused on climate risks and innovative fixes. Poulter was previously a NASA scientist and helped lead greenhouse gas monitoring efforts for the Biden administration. 'Losing these satellites prematurely gives away the leadership to Europe and to China in terms of monitoring CO2 concentrations and emissions,' Poulter said. Prematurely ending the OCO missions is consistent with the perception that the Trump administration 'doesn't want to do anything related to climate science and climate services,' he added. Crisp, the former NASA scientist, also told CNN that decommissioning so many Earth science missions at the same time fits a pattern. 'My guess is that they perceive these missions as missions that were designed for climate, for reinforcing climate hysteria or something,' Crisp said of the Trump administration. 'They think these missions were designed for a regulatory reason, for example. But I want to point out NASA is not a regulatory agency.' There are at least two possibilities for saving the carbon observatory mission, though researchers are not optimistic about either one coming to fruition. The first is Congress. Lawmakers could reject Trump's proposal and offer NASA the budget it needs to maintain US climate and Earth science status quo. Trump would also have to sign such a bill. The second possibility is to create a public-private partnership that pays the expenses for maintaining these instruments and processing the data back on Earth. This could take the form of a philanthropic organization, a wealthy individual or perhaps a university taking over OCO-2 or OCO-3, or perhaps both, for a period of time. The space agency has already issued a call for partnerships for OCO-3, and it is expected to put out a similar call for operating OCO-2 at some point this week, multiple researchers who work with OCO data said. 'There's this scramble to see what can be done before any sort of decommissioning or Phase F protocols go into effect later this year,' Poulter said. However, involving the private sector in operating OCO or other Earth-observing satellites can present complications, Michalak said, as it could diminish NASA's role in providing an accurate backbone of Earth observations. As the search for a partnership to save OCO-2 and OCO-3 begins, NASA only has less than two months to figure out how to keep the missions going.
