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Our Weather Satellites Are Dying
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that some experts say it is almost certain that the U.S. will soon face a year or more without crucial weather satellites that provide invaluable data for predicting storm tracks. This is because the existing polar satellites are nearing or beyond their life expectancies, and the launching of the next replacement, known as JPSS-1, has slipped until early 2017. Polar satellites provide 84 percent of the data used in the main American computer model tracking the course of Hurricane Sandy, which at first was expected to amble away harmlessly, but now appears poised to strike the mid-Atlantic states. The mismanagement of the $13 billion program to build the next generation weather satellites was recently described as a 'national embarrassment' by a top official of the Commerce Department. A launch mishap or early on-orbit failure of JPSS 1 could lead to a data gap of more than 5 years. The second JPSS satellite — JPSS 2 — is not scheduled for launch until 2022. 'There is no more critical strategic issue for our weather satellite programs than the risk of gaps in satellite coverage,' writes Jane Lubchenco, the under-secretary responsible for the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. 'This dysfunctional program that had become a national embarrassment due to chronic management problems.' As a aside, I know from personal experience that this isn't the first time NOAA has been in this situation. 'In 1992 NOAA's GOES weather satellites were at the end of their useful lives and could have failed at any time,' I wrote as a project manager for AlliedSignal at that time. 'So NOAA made an agreement with the government of Germany to borrow a Meteosat Weather Satellite as a backup and drift it over from Europe to provide weather coverage for the US's Eastern seaboard in the event of an early GOES failure.'"
NBC / weather channel / comcast has deep pockets may they can pay for one.
There are so many "checks and balances" in the system, and so much risk aversion, that the system can not perform. No program manager is ever rewarded for taking a risk, or succeeding, so the best ones are the ones who can redirect blame and reduce risk. Same with the contracting and finance people, and to no small extent, the government engineers. Worse, those who are competent flee the government, leaving us with a population that's not good or representative of their fields at large. I wasn't given the option to enter it (military orders) but I'm leaving as soon as I can, because it's a dead end, morally, emotionally and professionally.
They probably still have a shitload of high-resolution equipment above the US anyway. Might as well get some money out of it.
The new weather satalites will access The Cloud to speed deployment and reduce support costs.
I'll bet any amount that the people that designed and built the old satellites are not around anymore. "Next generation" is industry speak for "We have to start all over again.". Of course, I have no facts to back this up.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
are on the one side glad to support our allies on our axis, but must decline the shipment of data that might harm the religious feelings of many american citizens.
Weather is made by god, man shall not try to understand gods ways, because this would make man a god. Thus weather shall not be understood by the god fearing american people that replace a theory like evolution or the big bang theory by simpler means; creative design and the not so "creative beginning".
A just kidding, take as much data as you need, because if you fear for your life you also sell your soul, aren't you ?
Perhaps not but the US Department of Defense seems to toss up satellites with cameras on a regular basis. I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why this is so hard. The basic sensing suite should be well established by now. Satellite technology is well established. Certainly there is room for research - better sensors, more communications and whatnot but getting a garden variety weather satellite out just ought not to be so hard.
Maybe give it to the pros (DOD) or JPL or maybe even Elon Musk. Further, I have to believe with all the money we've spent on military satellites, they don't have spare weather sats sitting in a warehouse someone....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A proper weather satellite would control the weather, rather than simply observe it.
Then I could write my name in snow, across an entire continent.
Muhahahaha.
If you really want to save money have China build the satellites. They might even launch them in geosynchronous orbit over the US for free.
Why are we building meteorological satellites when we have the Weather Channel?
Why do we need "next generation" satellites? Why not build more of the same, which apparently have worked adequately for quite a while?
Car Analogy Warning: When fuel is your biggest cost, the price difference between launching a Model-T into orbit isn't really that relevant compared to launching a ferrari.
There's also the whole "technology improving" thing.
Imagine the current state of science if we were only using microscopes that "have worked adequately for quite a while"
Heck, feel free to compare and contrast a 1999 cell phone with one made in 2010.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I agree... we should let corporations tell us when weather is bad.
Because paying for information to be told a tornado is coming is a good idea.
Paying to be told a hurricane is coming is a good idea.
Preventing loss of life should be secondary to profits.
Also, none of that is bribing to save lives, its just good business.
If only we were less short sighted than profits and more caring about people. But fuck it, PROFITS!
"...when you over-spend on military interventions and bullying the world, and under-spend on useful tech."
Where do you think SATELLITE technology and the ability to LAUNCH them came from? The Peaceful Space Tech Fairie?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The Magellanic cloud hereby invites you to a party. Also attending will be the Oort cloud, the Milky Way gas clouds, a molecular cloud from Andromeda, and an alcohol cloud of considerable refinement*. CHON will be served. Entertainment will be provided by black holes stripping electrons.
*Only those from planets understood to be older than 6000 years may attend.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'll probably get some troll points for this, but after watching the recent Frontline titled Climate of Doubt, I wonder if there aren't some pretty powerful forces out there that just plain don't want weather/climate data all that much. The interviews in that show seem to indicate that the big money behind that effort (which over the last four years has somehow convinced half of the U.S. population that man made climate change is a myth, while science has gone in the opposite direction), is way more about Ayn Randian ideology than science.
All pretty scary if you ask me...like we're getting closer and closer to witch burning every day...
"Tornados also give you wings!" Cut to 30 second commercial.
Feel free to compare NASA's budget 2 decades ago with todays budget. Its about the same. Somehow the technology in the space sector has gotten more expensive over time, unlike the cell phones that you are talking about.
The space shuttle only cost $1.7 billion per craft and only $450 million per launch.. thats the fucking space shuttle!! Now a few weather satellites cost $13 billion to make and deploy? These is corporations gorging themselves at the trough of runaway government deficits.
"His name was James Damore."
Or at least ones that know their limitations and have good advisors to turn to when they hit those limits so they can make informed decisions.
Not eveyone knows everything.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's a brilliant example of one category of tragedy of the commons. The dollars spent are easily seen and tracked. The dollars saved are invisible.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The polar orbiting satellites are the quiet achievers of weather forecasting. Everyone sees the geostationary sat images on TV and think that's it, but there's a lot more going on with the polar sats.
They orbit north/south over the poles at about 800km. They are sun-synchronous (so the sun is always behind them illuminating the earth on their daylight run) and they do an orbit about every 90 minutes or so. The earth turns underneath them as they orbit, so they cover the entire globe. The current POES status is here
They transmit a heap of data - the data I receive here in Australia is the APT transmissions, which is 4 x 4 km per pixel resolution images in the visible and IR wavelength, which run constantly. As the satellite clears the horizon, you pick up the signal at two lines per second and about 15 minutes later on a directly overhead pass it sets again and you've got a nice, 2000km x 4000km image of your immediate area, just like if it came off a fax machine. The two wavelengths offered in the analog mode give you a visible image and allow you to read temperatures, so you can find thunderheads and cold fronts, for example. The APT transmissions just require a 137Mhz FM receiver and a simple antenna to pick up, so it's easy to get images.
They also have a digital mode - HRPT - with the entire range of 6 imaging sensors onboard and 1x1km per pixel resolution and you can do a lot with that - highlight vegetation, measure and and sea surface temps, locate and track fires and such.
Onboard there are also charge sensors for measuring auroral densities, and you can visit a webpage that shows the current auroral activity. The satellites can also receive, process and retransmit data from Search and Rescue beacon transmitters, and automatic data collection platforms on land, ocean buoys, or aboard free-floating balloons, as well as detect and map the ozone holes that appear yearly over the poles.
Their capabilities completely outclass the geosynchronous satellites and I hope that NOAA gets their act together and back on track with the launches.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Not that I want to get in the way of a rant with momentum (+5? Really?), but you do realize that at present the vast majority of people in the United States get their warnings about bad weather, approaching tornados, and hurricanes heading towards shore, from their local television and radio stations? You do realize that the vast majority of them are commercial enterprises? You know: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, the Weather Channel, etc.? You do realize what those organizations are, don't you? They are called "corporations," and I haven't noticed any mass slaughter going on due to lack of warning - quite the opposite. But it gets worse - the satellites that provide the weather information - built by corporations under contract. There is a growing chance that the next weather satellites will be carried into orbit by commercial space lift - rockets owned and operated by corporations. Still worse, the warnings about bad weather are transmitted on commercial equipment, in some cases on commercial communications satellites. The horror! How is it that we manage to avoid daily disaster, given your thinking? Is it possible there is a piece of the puzzle you aren't accounting for? (One piece? More than that I think.)
"Government" is just a word for things we do together. "Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily. -- David Burgeâ@iowahawkblog
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell