Can someone explain to me why Aura is a NASA mission, and not a NOAA mission? It seems to me that if one wants to focus NASA better, this is the kind of thing that would be better done by a different agency.

NOAA wants operational satellites, like GOES and POES, that get the job done with no publicity. NASA wants fancy high-tech untested high-resolution sensors. I've worked on satellites for both.

Does NOAA have access to TDRSS? The GOES satelites don't need them, but they only cover the western hemisphere. The TIROS class sun-synchonous satellites downlink through groundstations at Fairbanks and Wallops (as of 1997), limiting its coverage to the higher priority western hemisphere.

I think the answer is that AURA (along with the other EOS satellites TERRA and AQUA) require global surveys, meaning they need TDRSS and thus NASA. Their instruments are also tuned to test specific hypotheses, instead of general, fast turnaround monitoring. A third factor is international collaboration (TERRA had Japanese input on the ASTER camera; I dont know about AURA). That might be out of the purview of the Commerce Department.

Ground stations are not as big a deal as they were. New systems, using mega/gigabytes of chip-based memory don't require the ground station support that they used to.

NASA's role is to try new things in space, demonstrating that the technology works. Once that's been done and an operational use has been found, then the system (or its follow-on) is turned over to NOAA.

NASA's role is to try new things in space, demonstrating that the technology works. Once that's been done and an operational use has been found, then the system (or its follow-on) is turned over to NOAA...

And sometimes back again - Landsat has (as I understand it) reverted to NASA (operations) and USGS (data management), after many walks in the interagency wilderness.

The convoluted history of that program (undeniably one of the most successful satellite programs ever) makes one weep...

First, as to the question of "Why not NOAA?" the answer is simple: "Because..."

The real answer is terribly complex, nuanced, vague and unsatisfying. If the government decides that these things are worth doing, then they have to be done somewhere, and the question becomes which agency is more appropriate. NASA inherited this aspect of earth science at its start because it had the expertise to design, build and manage the satellites. NOAA's predecessors certainly did not. NASA has retained that expertise. NOAA doesn't have it. If NOAA was to run a program like this, then it needs to be given the people and the budgets and the facilities--transfer a chunk of Goddard SpaceFlight Center to NOAA. But why do that? It probably will not save any money, and while it might--MIGHT--improve communications between the people running these programs and the NOAA-type community, it will also harm communications between the people running these programs and the spaceflight operations community.

Closely related to this is the issue of the scientific constituency that uses the data and therefore designs the mission requirements. That constituency (atmospheric scientists) is currently in NASA. So it's not just program managers who have to be transferred over to NOAA, it is also the scientists as well. It is worth noting that when all these early decisions were first made, that constituency apparently did not really exist. There were weather forecasters, but there were not really people who studied global atmospheric issues. As that constituency was created and grew, it grew up in NASA, not NOAA.

Keep in mind that Aura is an earth _science_ mission, which removes it somewhat from NOAA's interests. If you want to ask a more pointed question, you might ask how come NASA manages the weather satellites, which are of primary importance to NOAA. And there again the answer is because the expertise lies within NASA, not NOAA. NASA has certainly messed up some of these projects in the past, but if you simply change the agency seal on their doors so that it reads NOAA instead of NASA, and still use the same people and resources and everything, there is no reason to believe that they will do any better. And at least being within NASA means that the Aura developers have a closer proximity to similar spaceflight launch and operations expertise, so there is some sense to this.

Now, to make it even more complicated...

Mr. Gallagher wrote:
"NOAA wants operational satellites, like GOES and POES, that get the job done with no publicity. NASA wants fancy high-tech untested high-resolution sensors."

There is a lot of truth to this. In fact, in the early days of weather satellites (early 1960s), NASA was assigned the task of developing the "operational" follow-on to Tiros. (Sidenote: NASA inherited Tiros from the Army, which started development when RCA proposed using spy-satellite technology that the Air Force had rejected.) This operational weather satellite was known as Nimbus.

However, what happened in 1961-1963 was that NASA's in-house scientists became more interested in atmospheric science issues than in weather forecasting. The Weather Bureau (NOAA's predecessor) simply wanted a better weather satellite. Nimbus started to become more and more of a scientific satellite than a weather satellite. Finally, NOAA defected. They called up the Air Force, which had a top secret weather satellite, and asked for their help. I don't know all the details (many of the Weather Bureau records were not saved, and I don't know where NASA put all its material), but it appears that this was a strong indication of what would later become quite common--NOAA wanted operational satellites to predict the weather and cared little about atmospheric science, whereas NASA was more interested in arcane atmospheric science issues.

This situation continued to exist as recently as the mid-1990s (the last time I really paid attention to it). The problem was that NASA had a tendency of designing what people in Washington call "self-licking ice cream cones," which are devices that satisfy themselves but not the real customer. NASA was designing satellites to gather atmospheric science data that NASA scientists were interested in. However, the vast community of atmospheric scientists, particularly those studying global warming, were not interested in these kinds of questions. They had their own questions and considered a lot of NASA's material to be irrelevant.

I believe that after much struggle, the old Mission to Planet Earth was reformulated into something of greater use to the atmospheric science community (although there are probably still lots of unhappy scientists). These are the current fleet of atmospheric science missions such as Aura, Aqua, etc.

I'm willing to be corrected on all of this. My primary knowledge on this stuff concerns the early metsat programs. Nobody has done a complete history of weather satellites and atmospheric sciences, despite the immense impact they have had on our lives. I used to argue with the former NASA historian that the agency really needed to sponsor a book on this. I believe they are now sponsoring a study on the history of atmospheric science in general, but I don't know the details.

If NOAA was to run a program like this, then it needs to be given the people and the budgets and the facilities--transfer a chunk of Goddard SpaceFlight Center to NOAA. But why do that?

To get it out of NASA's budget box (i.e., being lumped in with VA and HUD). It would then be part of the Commerce budget.

Just a thought, and not necessarily an inappropriate one if we're in the middle of an restructuring of the agency, and the nation's space program(s) in general.

Mr. Simberg wrote:
"To get it out of NASA's budget box (i.e., being lumped in with VA and HUD). It would then be part of the Commerce budget.

Just a thought, and not necessarily an inappropriate one if we're in the middle of an restructuring of the agency, and the nation's space program(s) in general."

But so what if it is now out of NASA's budget box? Has this actually _improved_ things in any way? One could argue that it might increase the failure risk for these missions, because now the spaceflight ops people have to coordinate with another agency (NASA) to do things. It probably won't save any money, and could actually cost more, as NOAA would also have to acquire oversight capabilities that it doesn't have, duplicating them from NASA. I've also been told that NOAA's current spaceflight community is tiny, so by giving them this mission, you would substantially skew the culture over there, so that the tail might start wagging the dog in NOAA. I don't know the particulars enough to say that this is a bad thing, but I think one could argue that there could be some serious negative consequences to the earth sciences mission, assuming that we (i.e. the American people) value that mission.

Right now, your argument seems primarily based upon aesthetics--that this stuff does not belong in NASA. But that's not a substantive argument. I guess a substantive argument could be made that if NASA does indeed completely change its focus to exploration missions, then these earth sciences missions will get neglected in NASA and therefore might be safer in NOAA. But I don't know if anybody is making that argument yet.

I do know that in some cases "logical" pairings can have negative consequences. The decision to merge the CIA-run National Photographic Interpretation Center and the Defense Mapping Agency into the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA--Now renamed the National Geospatial Information Agency, or NGA) in the mid-1990s was widely regarded by many of the NPIC people as a total disaster. The country lost hundreds of trained photo-interpreters. They had good benefits and training at NPIC, but knew that once they became part of a DoD agency (NIMA) they would get screwed. So they quit. NIMA then ended up with a substantial shortage of people to look at spy satellite photos during the 1990s. It is arguably one reason why the US missed the preparations for the Indian nuclear test in 1998 and also possibly why they missed the Rwandan genocide--they lost lots of trained people. In addition, one could argue that placing intelligence analysis under a military officer was a bad idea. President Eisenhower had been very specific about putting NPIC under a civilian. But now its functions are under a general officer.

(It was not simply the DoD benefits that drove them away. In the CIA, being a photo-interpreter actually required lots of training and had real value for your future career. But the DoD had a history of treating its interpreters like bean-counters and giving them minimal training. A CIA person with lots of training might suddenly find them working for a DoD manager who had less training than them. So people who had worked for a decade or more at NPIC and envisioned promotions through the CIA suddenly realized that they had far fewer options working for NIMA. So they voted with their feet and imagery intelligence analysis suffered.)

All I'm trying to point out is that these kinds of decisions have to be looked at carefully and the pros and cons weighed. I feel the same way about any apparently simple solution to space problems, from FFRDCs to prizes. It's not that these options may be bad, but they have to be carefully evaluated.

I do know that in some cases "logical" pairings can have negative consequences.

A more recent example might be Homeland Security. A case of moving deckchairs if ever there was one. TNR had a scathing review a few months ago.

I agree with you Rand :D

Matter of fact just reform NASA into the:

Moon Mars and Beyond Bureau

MMABB