Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 163
Although the civilian and military polar-orbiting meteorological satellite programs
have followed separate paths, there have been several attempts to bring them together
over the years. Officials within several administrations kept hoping that a merged system
could meet the requirements of both NOAA and DOD (because each had a need to
acquire imagery of clouds) while providing an overall savings to the government.
However, NOAA and DOD weather systems acquire varying kinds of data at different times
of the day to support distinct types of uses. For example, DOD is interested in cloud image
data acquired in the early morning to support tactical and strategic operations; NOAA is
more interested in atmospheric soundings in the early afternoon, which the National
Weather Service feeds into its predictive weather models. Furthermore, until the 1980s,
DMSP data were not shared with civilian users.
In 1973, a national space policy study led by the Office of Management and Budget
and the National Security Council 40 examined the fiscal and policy implications of conducting
separate DOD and NOAA operational weather satellite systems. This study based
its assessment of the technical feasibility and costs of a converged system on NOAA, NASA,
and DOD analyses, concluding that no option could maintain performance levels and also
reduce costs significantly. In addition, policy concerns regarding the open distribution of
weather data useful to potential adversaries argued for separate programs. 41 The 1973
review did, however, result in the Nixon administration directing NOAA to use the DMSP
Block SD spacecraft bus, then under development by the Air Force, as the basis for the
next-generation series of polar-orbiting satellites. In addition, NOAA and DOD were
instructed to coordinate more closely the management of the separate programs.
On seven other occasions since 1972, the Department of Commerce and DOD studied
the potential for integrating their programs. These studies did not lead to merged programs,
but they did result in a number of modest economies, including the use of similar
spacecraft with numerous common subsystems and components. In addition, both programs
have used a common launch vehicle and have shared responsibility for creating
products derived from the data. The two programs have also worked together closely on
research and development efforts and provided complementary environmental information.
Most of the sensors, however, remained under the design and control of each agency
(see Table II–1).
Despite these efforts, until the early 1990s, foreign policy and national security concerns
precluded full program integration. By that time, the drive to reduce the federal
budget and increase government efficiency led a number of observers to suggest again
consolidating the two systems. In addition, in October 1992, NASA and NOAA had begun
to explore the potential for consolidating aspects of NOAA’s Polar-orbiting Operational
Environmental Satellite (POES) system and NASA’s Earth Observing System satellite,
EOS-PM. The latter is an afternoon equator-crossing satellite that will gather data similar
to the POES afternoon satellite, but of much higher quality and complexity.
Table II–1
40. “The Meteorological Satellite Analysis Study (MSAS),” Office of Management and Budget, 1973.
This study was begun in 1972.
41. The United States had pledged to maintain an open civilian weather satellite system. Also, NOAA’s
environmental satellites demonstrated the U.S. “open skies” policy and satisfied long-standing U.S. obligations
to exchange Earth data with the meteorological agencies and scientific organizations of other nations.