NOAA’s Budget Boost Could Help Weather Satellite Program
The Obama Administration’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal increases funding for the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration by about $200 million compared to the previous year’s enacted funding levels. It would allocate $5.45 billion for the agency charged with forecasting the weather.
A hefty $2.2 billion of that requested budget would fund NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services (NESDIS), which maintains the agency’s satellite systems, including the aging polar-orbiting satellites that play a critical role in helping the NOAA’s National Weather Service forecast the weather.
Those polar-orbiting satellites – including one that was retired April 10, the same day the president’s budget came out – will not be replaced until 2017, leading to a potential gap in satellite coverage that could last up to 53 months, according to U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who recently testified before Congress on high-risk programs.
Currently, a converted demonstration satellite launched by the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) team in 2011, called the Suomi NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), leads the aging squad of satellites, but its lifecycle is not likely to be long. Though NESDIS will receive more money than it did in 2013, the added funding will not speed up the initial launch ofJPSS-1, the first true replacement polar-orbiting satellite under the program.
Full article by Frank Konkel, FCW
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