Satellite Failure Major Hit To "Already Weak" NASA Earth Observation Assets - WP

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WASHINGTON -- A new satellite to track the chief culprit in global warming crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after launch Tuesday, dealing a major setback to NASA's already weak network for monitoring Earth and its environment from above.

The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming?

"It's definitely a setback. We were already well behind," said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton's administration. "The program was weak and now it's really weak."

For about a decade, scientists have complained of a decline in the study of Earth from space. NASA spent more money looking at other planets than it did at Earth in 2007. That same year, the National Academy of Sciences warned that NASA's study of Earth "is at great risk" with fewer missions than before and aging satellites. "We have a very weakened Earth observing system just at a time where we need every bit of data that we could possibly get," said Elisabeth Holland, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/24/AR2009022401768.html

[Vincardog]

1. Anyone surprised at this fact? Calling all Aluminati the Oil Barons sabotaged the satellite

[lapfog_1]

2. As a former 10 year NASA employee

who was part of critical review of MTPE in the late '90s, I can say that the program needed more
attention even then, and what's happened to it since then (the BOOOSH years) has been criminal.

There was one and only one reason to spend money and people to the "return to the moon" project, and
that was to kill any funding for MTPE and global warming studies.