Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 165
million through the year 2000 and $1 billion over a decade by creating a converged environmental
satellite system. The National Performance Review also recommended that
NASA
assist in ongoing efforts to converge U.S. operational weather satellites, given the benefits of
streamlining the collection of weather data across the government... By considering
[Mission to Planet Earth] research activities in context with operational weather satellite
programs, cost savings are possible through convergence of the current operational satellite
fleets. Convergence of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Polar Metsat and NASA’s EOS-PM (Earth Observing System Afternoon Crossing
[Descending] Mission) will eliminate redundancy of measurements, enhance the capability
of NOAA’s data set and potentially result in cost savings. 43
After further study, Vice President Gore’s initial proposition resulted in a plan
detailed in a May 1994 Presidential Decision Directive (also known as NSTC-2) on the
“Convergence of U.S.-Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite Systems.”
[II-10] This decision directive called for an Integrated Program Office (IPO) that will “be
responsible for the management, planning, development, fabrication, and operations of
the converged system.” The IPO was set up in October 1994. NOAA gained the lead
responsibility for operations, with DOD leading systems acquisition and NASA leading
new development and the insertion of new technologies.
One of the important considerations in exploring the exact terms of convergence was
prior interest at NOAA in cooperating more closely with Europe in NOAA’s polarorbiting
program. Europe had been contributing instruments to NOAA’s POES spacecraft
since 1978. During the early 1980s, the Reagan administration attempted to reduce the
two-satellite constellation (one morning-crossing, one afternoon-crossing) to a single afternoon-crossing
spacecraft. NOAA officials became extremely concerned that maintaining
only a single orbiter would greatly reduce the reliability of data delivery. Hence, the agency
began discussions with other countries, forming the International Polar Orbiting
Meteorological Satellite Group (IPOMS) to promote a more equitable sharing of the burden
of maintaining polar-orbiting meteorological satellites. Membership in IPOMS included
most of the major remote-sensing satellite operators. Within IPOMS, the European
Space Agency (ESA) together with the newly created European Organisation for the
Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) expressed interest in providing a
European polar orbiter that could replace one of NOAA’s spacecraft. 44
Under the strategy developed during the 1980s, NOAA planned to provide several
instruments for a European orbiter, which would replace the morning-crossing NOAA
satellite. Originally, this satellite was to be a large ESA spacecraft carrying both global
change research instruments and operational meteorological instruments. 45 By 1992, this
plan had evolved into one in which Europe would orbit two spacecraft: an ESA global
change research satellite, Envisat, and a EUMETSAT meteorological operational satellite,
43. Office of Vice President, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA05: Clarify the Objectives
of the Mission to Planet Earth Program, in Accompanying Report of the National Performance Review (Washington, DC:
Office of the Vice President, September 1993).
44. Minutes of the Fourth IPOMS Plenary and First Administrative Working Group Tokyo, Japan,
November 12–13, 1987, IPOMS Reports, National Environmental Data and Information System, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1987, Space Policy Institute Documentary History Collection,
Washington, DC.
45. This spacecraft was originally conceived to be one of an international fleet of large research and
operational polar orbiters, launched and serviced by the Space Shuttle. With the loss of Challenger in January
1986 and the subsequent change of U.S. policy toward the use of the Space Shuttle, these plans were abandoned.