Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Except that the sat was NOT dismantled. The program was.
The sat is sitting on ice, so to speak, and ready to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which seems wasteful to me
It's called redundancy, not just physical satellites, but also redundancy in ideas, technology, and methods of data processing. Also, every big nation launching their own satellites means they can pursue their own ideas, without endless committee meetings. Plus, if there's only one type of satellite, designed by a single party, then there will be even more conspiracies about how the data is manipulated.
I mean, we're talking about $100 million for a satellite that lasts a decade. That's what we pay for a football coach.
> It's called paying taxes.
This is why a socialist uber-state can't evolve into final stage communism. You end up with precisely this kind of dependence mentality. The average citizen is turned a helpless child.
They're idea of "social responsibility" is completely abdicating any responsibility for whatever social problems they identify. It's someone else's job to solve the problem and pay for it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes. We're not the greatest country in the world. Yet we seem to be the only country actually capable of actually doing stuff. We're not supposed to be the global police, except when we're expected to be just that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.