Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

Chapter Two
Observing the Earth From Space
by Pamela E. Mack and Ray A. Williamson 1
Programs that apply the capabilities of space technology to needs such as telecommunications
and Earth observation have brought society many concrete benefits.
However, developing projects to realize those benefits has not been easy, particularly for
Earth observations. Applications programs have neither the glamor and high-profile political
impact of human spaceflight nor the well-organized advocacy community of the space
scientists. NASA, which is primarily a research and development agency, has had an
ambivalent relationship with the application of space technology to Earth-bound needs.
While the space agency welcomes opportunities to prove its value in concrete ways, it recognizes
that an applications program that has completed development and entered the
operational phase must usually be transferred from NASA to another agency or to a private
sector user; not surprisingly, NASA staff have often preferred to work on those programs
that do not have to be “given away.”
Although scientific and technological feasibility and accomplishment are essential to
space applications, they are only part of the story. Tensions between NASA, as developer
of space capabilities, and the organizations or experts who actually distribute or use the
services or data provided by applications satellites also play an important part in the success
or failure of applications programs. To give a few examples, some scientists were excited
about the data that meteorological satellites could provide, but their enthusiasm
played a smaller role in the origin of the Television Infrared Operational Satellite
(TIROS), the first meteorological satellite project, than did military needs. The Kennedy
administration created the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat) as an innovative
way of bringing a new form of international telecommunications into being, but traditional
communications corporations steadily increased their role in satellite
communications. 2 NASA predicted large benefits from crop surveys using data from Earth
resource satellites, but agricultural scientists took a different approach to using the data
than the one NASA had developed.
This broad theme—that different players have different goals and expectations—also
has been played out in specific controversies in different applications projects. Usually at
about the time of the launch of an initial satellite, programs have often experienced disputes
over whether to conduct further research or to develop an operational program
immediately. Knowing that the research satellite would set much of the pattern for their
operational program, users have often sought more control over the initial development
of an applications satellite than NASA wanted them to have. Finally, programs have suffered
from major controversies over the proper role of the government in their development
and operations. Communications satellite systems became the province of private
industry, but only after a bitter debate concerning whether or not to turn the fruits of government
research over to private profit. Congress in the early 1980s rejected in no
1. The authors thank Don Blersch, Russ Koffler, Rob Masters, and Brent Smith for providing information
and Frank Eden for his review of a draft of this essay.
2. Communications satellites are discussed in Chapter One; they are mentioned in this chapter only in
terms of their relationship to Earth observation satellite programs.
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