The 'New' NASA Will Look Back at Earth

[n2doc]

An artist's concept of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Credit: NASA
By Andrea Thompson
NASA's new proposed budget will in part shift the space agency's focus from landing people on the moon back to Earth, with more money slated to go to projects that will help us understand our planet's climate and even plans to re-launch the carbon observatory that failed to launch last year.

The 2011 proposed budget for NASA, announced on Monday, cancels the Constellation program to build new rockets and spacecraft optimized for the moon, but increases NASA's overall budget by $6 billion over the next five years. Of that $6 billion, about $2 billion will be funneled into new and existing science missions, particularly those aimed at investigating the Earth sciences, particularly climate.

"That's about 27 percent of the overall budget over the next five years of the agency will be dedicated to science," said Edward Weiler, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The Earth and climate science division will get the bulk of the money allocated to science, and that money will bolster Earth science missions that are either already in the works or proposed, "NASA will be able to turn its considerable expertise to advancing climate-change research and observations," Weiler said today in a press briefing.

In particular, NASA's budget will allow the agency to re-fly the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), which crashed into the ocean near Antarctica just after launch almost a year ago. NASA has decided to give the mission a second chance, because it "is critical to our understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle and its effect on climate change," Weiler said.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/climate-science-nasa-budget-100202.html

[Craftsman]

1. More like turn its back on engineering, manned flight, and jobs

This is a big mistake.

[bananas]

10. No, this is a return to the original NASA mission

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/science/22nasa.html?_r=1

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: July 22, 2006

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

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In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

And since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track changes on the earth’s surface, the agency has been increasingly involved in monitoring the environment and as a result has been immersed in political disputes over environmental policy and spending, said W. Henry Lambright, a professor of public administration and political science at Syracuse University who has studied the trend.

<snip>

[Johonny]

15. I agree

Can't understand why people "love" sending people in low Earth orbit for so little scientific gain. It's not like all these satellites don't have engineering, labor and more important generate more and better pure scientific information. It's as true today as it was at the beginning of the our ventures into space. Frankly it's NASAs own fault for over selling manned missions for some 50 years.

[PhD]

13. Absolutely 100% right!

[Speck Tater]

2. Empires die with a whimper, not a bang. bt

[Craftsman]

3. Alot of other places we could cut that would not hurt us in the long run like this

[BadgerKid]

4. Geek alert

Orbiting Carbon Observatory = OCO == formula for carbon dioxide

But my money is on the likelihood everyone already figured that out. B-)


EDIT: But that is also a correct representation of the molecule!

[n2doc]

5. In one sense this is a lot of money to try and get better evidence for climate change

which is fine with me, but I also suspect that we will never get enough evidence to satisfy most of the deniers.

And, if we were really dedicated towards cutting edge missions like a Mars manned mission, we would have a strong impetus to push the tech forwards. We really lack that push in this country, on a number of fronts.

[Phoonzang]

6. That shouldn't be NASA's job. That's what NOAA and the USGS are for. nt

[n2doc]

7. true, especially NOAA, they have their own sats n/t

[bananas]

8. So James Hansen shouldn't work at NASA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen

James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division. He has held this position since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

After graduate school, Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models and attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. This naturally led to the same computer codes being used to understand the Earth's atmosphere. He used these codes to study the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on the climate. Hansen has also contributed to the further understanding of the Earth's climate through the development and use of global climate models.

Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to limit the impacts of climate change.

In 2009 his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, was published.<1>

<snip>

[bananas]

11. It is NASA's job, it's the first objective listed in the National Aeronautics and Space Act

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

See post #10 above: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=64148&mesg_id=64194

[Duppers]

12. NASA has special techniques to analyze atmosphere on other planets

They are applying them to earth. Much of the instrumentation used by NOAA was invented by NASA scientists. The atmospheric conditions have profound affects on aircraft performance.

[bananas]

9. self-delete

wrong place

[Swamp Rat]

14. I hope they'll send up a replacement for the Landsat and ASTER sensors

It would be nice to have high res NIR and MIR with many bands at less than 1 foot spatial resolution.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. i.e. restoring funding to programs cut by Bu**sh** ...

anything that monitored global warming or ozone depletion was bled white under the Sock Puppet.