Goetz says:
(T)he Landsat series of satellites now face a crippling data gap. Landsat-7, launched by the United States in 1999 as the latest in the series, suffered a sensor malfunction in 2003 that severely limits its utility. Landsat-5, launched in 1984, has far outlived its 3-year design life and will run out of fuel before the launch of the next satellite in the series, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), which will occur in 2011 at best. If LDCM fails to launch (Landsat-6 pitched into the Pacific in 1993), then the societal benefits that have resulted from the Landsat program will come to an abrupt end. An equally troubling situation faces the next generation of U.S. observational weather satellites. The National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is experiencing large cost overruns, and funding for the instruments designed to fly on these satellites for the study of Earth's climate has been cut.On the other hand, "India, China, and Brazil are launching Landsat-class satellites. Other countries, such as Libya and Nigeria, are experimenting with microsatellite systems for Earth observation."
Geotz states:
Unfortunately, a current focus of NASA--the "new vision" of a manned mission to Mars--is taking priority over securing necessary Earth observations.Comment: The Bush administration seems to believe that information is not as important as political initiatives, and seems not to want the government to generate still more data showing how backward its environmental policies have been. JAD
2 comments:
India, China, and Brazil are NOT launching Landsat-class satellites. The only comparable satellite in the works is the European Sentinel-2.
There is, of course, the NASA/USGS LANDSAT "Gap-Filler", but who knows when and if that will ever get off the ground.
I think you need to say more, anonymous. How is Science wrong. Are these countries not launching satellites for earth observation, or is it simply that the quality of the data they will send back is less satisfactory than Landsat?
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