Geoscientists warn of underfunding of earth observation
A newly formed panel of more than fifty US geoscientists is calling on the US government to provide sufficient funding for selected space missions to observe the Earth in the coming years. Without the satellites, data acquisition and thus the scientifically reliable calculation of climate and weather models, the greenhouse effect, the melting of polar ice or tropospheric research would be at great risk, the authors write in their budget recommendation for the decade from 2010.
In the USA, according to the US government, Nasa's funds had recently been reallocated in order to allow more money to flow into future missions to the moon and Mars. In the course of savings, various measuring instruments of the NPOESS (National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System) mission fell victim, which according to the current status is only to be launched in 2013 in a reduced form. According to current plans, the number of geoscientific projects would be reduced by a third by 2010.
From a list of one hundred submitted proposals for space geoscience projects, the panel selected 17 as eligible, each costing between $65 million and $800 million. The projects, which also include the hitherto unplanned successor to missions such as ICESat and Grace, which are still working successfully, can be financed if NASA would increase its earth observation budget to the level of the year 2000 with an additional $500 million. (yo)
