Une décision “catastrophique” : Donald Trump ordonne à la NASA de détruire un satellite d’exception
C'est officiel. La Maison-Blanche veut mettre fin à deux missions spatiales de la NASA conçues pour mesurer avec une précision inédite le dioxyde de carbone. Leur disparition priverait la planète d’outils scientifiques uniques, tout en suscitant une tempête politique à Washington. (LES NUMERIQUES)
Climate: Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose
The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere. The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.
An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.
NASA mission leaders were told to make termination plans for projects that would lose funding under President Trump's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, or FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The employees asked to remain anonymous, because they were told they would be fired if they revealed the request.
Ihe White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and its director, Russ Vought, are overstepping by directing NASA and other agencies to stop spending money that Congress has already appropriated. In the past, Vought has been vocal about cutting what he sees as inappropriate spending on projects related to climate change. Before he joined the Trump administration, Vought authored sections of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 roadmap for remaking the federal government. In that document, Vought wrote that "the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding"
The information can also help predict future political instability, since crop failures are a major driver of mass migration all over the world. For example, persistent drought in Honduras is one factor that has led many farmers there to migrate north, NPR reporting found. And damage to crops and livestock from extreme weather in Northern Africa has contributed to migration from that region.
And that data showed some surprising things. "Fifty years ago we thought the tropical forests were like a huge vacuum cleaner, sucking up carbon dioxide," Denning explains. "Now we know they're not."
Instead, boreal forests in the northern latitudes suck up a significant amount of carbon dioxide, the satellite data shows. The cost of maintaining the two OCO satellite missions up in space is a small fraction of the amount of money taxpayers already spent to design and launch the instruments. "Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data."
npr „Die Situation für Erdbeobachtung und Klimawissenschaft in den USA ist einfach tragisch und sehr kurzsichtig“, sagt Julia Marshall vom Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt zu Table.Briefings. Die geplanten Kürzungen seien extrem, klagen Klimawissenschaftler, die namentlich nicht genannt werden möchten. So sollen beispielsweise zwei langjährige Missionen zur Messung von Kohlendioxid gestoppt werden, obwohl sie schon lange funktionsfähig im All sind. Das sei besonders sinnlos, weil die hohen Kosten für den Raketenstart und den Bau der Instrumente schon getätigt wurden.