Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

Oversight. DOD will require some mechanisms to ensure their requirements continue
to be met. Possible implementation details could involve including DOD user and
acquisition experts in the NOAA program offices and operations facilities, allowing DOD
to fund and manage DOD-unique parts of the program, and establishing an interagency
oversight group to which the program would have to report periodically to ensure that all
agency requirements were adequately met. Such oversight mechanisms should not be difficult
to achieve. The driving force behind this effort is clearly the desire to reduce costs.
Further cost reduction could be achieved through greater international participation.
According to Dr. Ray A. Williamson of the Office of Technology Assessment: “Greater
international coordination and collaboration on sensors and systems . . . will eventually be
needed in order to reap the greatest benefit from the world-wide investment in remote
sensing.”(16)
NOAA is already working on such arrangements in its POES program by asking the
Europeans to assume a greater role. An agreement in principle has been reached between
NOAA and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
(EUMETSAT) whereby EUMETSAT will purchase, launch, and operate one of the two
current POES missions beginning in the year 2000. This will save the U.S. more than $100
million for each launch of one of these satellites. Such cooperation with the Europeans is
an important component of cost-efficient operations and is the first step to a truly international
environmental satellite observing system.
Action
Legislation should be enacted to establish a single environmental polar satellite program
under the direction of NOAA.
Congress should enact legislation to establish a single environmental polar satellite
under the direction of NOAA. The legislation should direct NOAA, NASA, and DOD to
undertake activities to establish this effort within their existing programs.
Implications
The proposed changes would allow for a more efficient, less-costly global satellite
observation program. A strong, efficient U.S. polar environmental monitoring program
would be the foundation for a cooperative international system. The Europeans already
plan to increase funding for an element of this system. With a solid, unified U.S. national
program in place, other countries may align their programs to complement the basic system.
The result will be additional environmental data collected at minimal cost to the
nation. The convergence concept provides a feasible and cost-effective opportunity to
accurately monitor and predict the impact of the environment on the world’s societies.
The greatest difficulty in the proposal will be to ensure that a single, national program
under civilian leadership will be responsive to national security needs. However, these concerns
can be met much more easily now than they could have in the past.
Fiscal Impact
EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 219
Cost savings over ten years would total about $1.3 billion. This is based on a threesatellite
system (with European participation) relying on NASA to develop new hardware.