Whitehouse Moves to Destroy Satellite That Monitors Greenhouse Gases

Summary

The Trump Administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2026 would take an axe to NASA science. Two satellite missions on the chopping block have provided climate scientists, oil and gas companies, and farmers with critical atmospheric carbon data for years. The Orbiting Carbon Observatories are a pair of instruments that map atmospheric carbon on a global scale. NASA launched the OCO-2 in 2014 and mounted the OCO-3 on the International Space Station in 2019. Trump’s budget proposal threatens both missions, but the standalone OCO-2 would be completely destroyed during its fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere. Though the budget has yet to pass, NPR reports that NASA scientists working on the OCO missions are already making “Phase F” plans—essentially laying out options for termination. David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist who designed the satellites and managed the missions until 2022, told NPR that the NASA employees making those plans have reached out to tap his expertise. “They were asking me very sharp questions,” Crisp said. “The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan.” Three other academic scientists and two current NASA employees—all of whom requested anonymity—also confirmed to NPR that the agency is planning to terminate the missions. Congress has already funded both satellites through the end of fiscal year 2025, NPR reports. It could still choose to extend their funding through 2026, but it remains to be seen. In July, congressional Democrats did warn acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy not to terminate missions that Congress has funded—a sign that they may attempt to save the OCOs. Decommissioning these satellites would mark a significant scientific loss. The OCO-2 and OCO-3 sniff out atmospheric carbon dioxide using spectrometers to detect wavelengths of light absorbed by CO2 molecules. NASA designed them to improve monitoring of human-driven carbon emissions and vari...