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The US Has Destroyed A Critical Sea Ice-Measuring Satellite (scientificamerican.com)
"A key polar satellite used to measure the Arctic ice cap failed a few days ago, leaving the U.S. with only three others, and those have lived well beyond their shelf lives," writes long-time Slashdot reader edibobb. The Guardian reports that all three of the remaining satellites "are all beginning to drift out of their orbits over the poles" and will no longer be operational by 2023. This could put an end to nearly 40 years of uninterrupted data on polar ice, notes the original submission, adding "It seems like there would be a backup satellite, right?
"In fact, there was a backup satellite ready to go." The $58 million satellite was dismantled in 2016 when the Republican-controlled Congress cut its funding. (The Guardian reports that many scientists "say this decision was made for purely ideological reasons.") Now Nature reports: The U.S. military is developing another set of weather satellites...but the one carrying a microwave sensor will not launch before 2022. That means that when the current three aging satellites die, the United States will be without a reliable, long-term source of sea-ice data... For now, the the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center is preparing for those scenarios by incorporating data from Japan's AMSR2 microwave sensor into its sea-ice record. Another, more politically fraught option is to pull in data from the China Meteorological Administration's Fengyun satellite series... Since 2011 Congress has banned NASA scientists from working with Chinese scientists -- but not necessarily from using Chinese data. One final possibility is finding a way to launch the passive-microwave sensor that scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory salvaged from the dismantled DMSP satellite. The sensor currently sits at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, where researchers are trying to find a way to get it into orbit.
"In fact, there was a backup satellite ready to go." The $58 million satellite was dismantled in 2016 when the Republican-controlled Congress cut its funding. (The Guardian reports that many scientists "say this decision was made for purely ideological reasons.") Now Nature reports: The U.S. military is developing another set of weather satellites...but the one carrying a microwave sensor will not launch before 2022. That means that when the current three aging satellites die, the United States will be without a reliable, long-term source of sea-ice data... For now, the the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center is preparing for those scenarios by incorporating data from Japan's AMSR2 microwave sensor into its sea-ice record. Another, more politically fraught option is to pull in data from the China Meteorological Administration's Fengyun satellite series... Since 2011 Congress has banned NASA scientists from working with Chinese scientists -- but not necessarily from using Chinese data. One final possibility is finding a way to launch the passive-microwave sensor that scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory salvaged from the dismantled DMSP satellite. The sensor currently sits at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, where researchers are trying to find a way to get it into orbit.
The science of climate change is already settled. The only question is how bad will it be. Without data from this satalite we should just assume the worst and raise carbon taxes appropriately. What is the worst the could happen, we accidentally end up with a better world?
To measure it in person
The headline seems a bit out of sync with the reality. The US destroyed it? Sounds like hardware failure.
So one failed, three more are failing and one had its funding cut. Where's the destroyed one of the headline?
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
satellites need fuel to stay in place when it get's to low they get moved to the graveyard orbit
Maybe a pro-science country can step up and provide the data. India, China, this is your chance to show the world that you have more sense than Trump's America, though I admit this is a very low bar.
If it's that important set up a gofundme page and create your own satellite.
The US are not the only country to put things in space.
Japan, Europe and China also have appropriate satellites, as mentioned in the article. It is not like measurements will stop just because the US lost some satellites. It may make exploitation a bit more difficult because of the differences in design but aggregating data is something that has to be done eventually. Climate science is an international matter.
The US plans to launch new satellites in a few years anyways. So they didn't drop the ball entirely.
The spin on the story suggests Congress purposely cut funding to that satellite for ideological reasons (in the opinion of 'many' scientists). Go to the link and it becomes clear that the program had been very poorly managed and half a billion had been spent on the satellite PLUS the manager (the Air Force) is already working on follow-on programs.
So really what was the intent of this post? To make it seem like this was part of a Republican anti-science/climate change denial effort?
Actually the story should be: under the previous administration the Air Force was permitted to mismanage a publicly funded project to the tune of +$500 million dollars and finally Congress stopped the pouring of more money in to the project.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If you cant measure it, its not real!
And if you can, then it must be fake, unless it matches ideologies?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So the existing satellites go out of service in 2023, and the Air Force satellite will go up in 2022.
How does this equate to "we will no longer have the ability to measure sea ice?"
There is nothing in this that says that we destroyed a sat.
It simply says that the GOP is trying to block launch of replacement (stupid, but not the same as destroying it).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hey cupcakes, the ice was there before the satellite, and it will be there long after the satellite. Who friggin' cares! Grow a pair, cupcake.
Those people are actually govt deniers. They don't believe that governments are the source of many of the world's problems but rather that more govt and more govt spending are desirable.
We'll 3D print a new one and let the free market sort it out. Right?
No more of these expensive satellites! Free market rules tell us we'll get our weather information from the Weather Channel just like everyone else.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Satellites need fuel to stay in place, when they get too low they get moved to the graveyard orbit.
FTFY
Call Elon. It'll be up in a month. Two tops.
Satellites need fuel to stay in place; when they get too low they get moved to the graveyard orbit.
FTFY
At our office we scrap things all the time. That doesn't mean we destroy it. We usually put it into storage in case it ever gets revived.
In this particular case, reading the actual article (and not just the summary), the U.S. Congress was annoyed at the money spent on keeping the satellilte in storage, and had it destroyed. So, no, in this case, scrapped did mean destroyed.
Reading the old articles, though, nobody was discussing sea ice, which is just one of the least important things the satellite was to measure-- primarily it was a Defense weather satellite (weather turns out to be very important to the Department of Defence-- particularly to the Navy. Who knew?)
No wonder the polar caps are melting. Everybody knows that if you put ice in a microwave it will melt!
>> leaving the U.S. with only three others
First world problems FTW
I thought corporations were the inventors of climatr science hate ...
Or is capitalism Russian now too?
Somebod should make a parody of "Everything is AWESOME".
The article says the replacement will be ready in 2022 and the existing satellites will be operational until 2023. So whatâ(TM)s the problem? Also, the satellite cost cost 58 million to build but they stored it since the 1990s at a cost of 500 million. That makes no sense at all. It also makes no sense that the Air Force is in the weather satellite business at all. We have NASA and we have NOAA in charge of this space. This is just waste and mismanagement.
Satellites need fuel to stay in place; when they get too low, they get moved to the graveyard orbit.
FTFY
Any other group of people on the planet, it doesn't have to be a government, could fund this if it's seen by that group of people as so crucial. Why does the United States government always become the villain when they decide to not spend money they don't have to fund something that literally thousands, if not millions, of other groups of people could fund?
This is a serious question. Private companies put satellites into orbit all of the time. If so many people feel this is so crucial to the survival of humanity and/or the planet why couldn't this be done by some other group, whether it be private or governmental?
Climate deniers know they lie. So they sabotage satellite funding.
Why would Republicans vote to eliminate the scientific instruments that could prove their case that global warming is a hoax?
Umm...ins't using microwaves to measure ice thickness counter productive?
They can just send up a weather balloon or other various solutions. After all, Space is fake. The Earth is flat.
Really Slashdot? Headline hardly does justice to the complexity and thought of the issue found within the linked article. 1800s yellow news papers would be proud.
If your spare satellite program is being ran in such an utterly inefficient and wasteful way, there is some real sense to shutting the program down. Especially with alternates coming on-line within a few years.
Without the satellite you'll never find out if it was all a lie. But since the science is settled, you'll stop trying to complain and get in the way of what the science says, right? After all you HAVE said the science is settled, right?
If it's not destroyed, what does destroy mean? It's in pieces now and the pieces cannot be put back to the original purpose, they're gone, destroyed. Or do you think they just put the pieces away like some lego set?
What was this satellite going to do that NASA's new IceSat-2 won't be doing?
Do we really need continuous coverage or are twice yearly plane surveys (IceBridge) sufficient? Planes are certainly a lot cheaper to operate and sensors can be updated more frequently.
--XYZZY--
For more information from Ray Spencer....
"But as NASA’s leader of the U.S. Science Team on one of the best satellite instruments developed for monitoring sea ice, I can tell you we will not lose our ability to monitor sea ice.
Admittedly, the premature failure of the Defense Department’s DMSP F17 and F19 satellites has definitely reduced the number of times a day we can measure the polar regions."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/20...
But, will they be ready on time?
As far as the mismanagement claim, the poster who pointed out all the mismanaged military projects that are KEPT hit the ball out of the park.
CA's Governor Brown has threatened have CA launch its own satellites if the Fed gov't flakes on climate research. I wonder how GOP would react? #CASA!
Table-ized A.I.
If you envirofaggots are so worried about muh global warmies then go buy iron oxide from the chinks and dump it in international waters, then shut the fuck up and let it snow.
Hide it so the Repubs that believe the earth was created 10000 years ago don't grab it just to destroy it.
Who in the world is pulling the editors strings?
The fuckin' thing was not destroyed. The funding was cut.
It is on HOLD till the funding is restored.
The headline is a lie. Did HRC post this story?
If so, I hope not too many people got killed.
Anyone who has bothered to download and read the emails and documents in the 2009 and 2011 CRU zip files knows that getting data to support their beliefs has never been a problem for the AGW crowd. They destroyed the raw thermometer data on surface temperatures and created "synthetic" temperature data (i.e., they made the data up out of thin air) to support their hockey stick.
In the HARRY_READ_ME.TXT file you can follow the profanity to see what they thought about the condition of their own data, and how they replaced actual temperature data with computer generated data.
It's not hard to claim that "out data supports our claim" when they deliberately synthesize the "data" to do exactly that. When I was in grad school we called such behavior unethical, immoral, cooking and trimming.
This is very much like the kind of attack former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to conduct on Canadian scientists...shut down projects that featured decades of uninterrupted data collection and muzzle the scientists themselves. Any break in the continuity of data collection can seriously compromise the value of the data.
American scientists stepped up to the plate when Harper muzzled Canadian scientists. I think it's time we Canadians returned the favour. I will 100% buck up if there's a crowdfunding effort to get one or more replacement satellites into orbit while there's still time to keep the data flowing. Additionally, I'll lobby my friends, business contacts and political contacts to kick in.
One of the factors leading to Harper's defeat in the last election was his attack on science. Canadians, even a lot of fairly conservative Canadians, hated him for it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Need fuel to stay in place satellites do. When get too low they do, moved to the graveyard orbit they are.
FTFY
In the US, government employees — specifically legislators — take money and favors from the oil companies in order to slant fuel production, transport, use and pollution remediation strongly towards them in every way they possibly can.
So yes, it is the government that has been (and continues to go on) driving it here in the USA.
Those days are slowly drawing to a close, though. It's long past time for it to happen. Burning oil is a filthy habit.
The only remaining partially jumped hurdle is clean energy storage.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Here is the scientist that actually works with the sats.
a bunch of ice-holes
Don't bother with the article, learn to read the summary. Then you can move on to your next spam faster.
Why does the US need to pay for this. It is a WORLD problem right? The EU can certainly pay for a satellite as easily as the US can!
And when there are 3 other satellites currently collecting the data with lots of years before they fail, why the panic?
You have this thing, that because the science is settled, I should care about climate change. What if I benefit from it?