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Report Warns of Rapid Decline in U.S. Earth ObservationCapabilities May 07, 2012 A new National Research Council report says that budget shortfalls,cost-estimate growth, launch failures and changes in mission designand scope have left U.S. earth observation systems in a moreprecarious position than they were five years ago. The reportcautions that the nation's earth observing system is beginning arapid decline in capability, as long-running missions end and keynew missions are delayed, lost or cancelled. "The projected loss of observing capability will have profoundconsequences on science and society, from weather forecasting toresponding to natural hazards," said Dennis Hartmann, professor ofatmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, andchair of the committee that wrote the report. "Our ability tomeasure and understand changes in Earth's climate and life supportsystems will also degrade." The report comes five years after the Research Council published"Earth Science and Applications From Space: National Imperativesfor the Next Decade and Beyond," a decadal survey that generatedconsensus recommendations from the earth and environmental scienceand applications community for a renewed program of earthobservations. The new report finds that although NASA respondedfavorably and aggressively to the decadal survey, the requiredbudget was not achieved, greatly slowing progress. Changes inprogram scope without commensurate funding, directed by the Officeof Management and Budget and by Congress, also slowed progress. Afurther impediment, the report says, is the absence of a highlyreliable and affordable medium-class launch capability. Despite these challenges, NASA has been successful in launchingsome of the missions in development when the survey report waspublished. It has also made notable progress in establishing the"Venture-class" program, as recommended in the decadal survey. Thesuborbital program and the airborne science program are additionalareas where significant progress is being made. In accord with thedecadal survey's recommendations, NASA also aggressively pursuedinternational partnerships to mitigate shortfalls and stretchresources. In the near term, the report concludes, budgets for NASA's earthscience program will remain inadequate to meet pressing nationalneeds. Therefore the agency should focus on two necessary actions:defining and implementing a cost-constrained approach to missiondevelopment and identifying and empowering a cross-mission earthsystem science and engineering team to advise on the execution ofdecadal survey missions. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Mobile Security DVR , Dynamic IP Camera for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Mobile DVR Recorders.
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