Washington -- With 15 Earth observing spacecraft already in orbit and another 15 proposed for the next decade, NASA is well positoned to support U.S. President Barack Obama's climate change agenda provided he follows through with the necessary funding, according to scientists involved in studying the Earth from space.

 

The Earth sciences community is counting on Obama to deliver the budgets needed to tackle an ambitious set of 15 missions laid out in the National Research Council's 10-year plan for space- based Earth observation, known as the Earth science decadal survey.

 

How much of NASA's proposed $18.7 billion for 2010 will go toward Earth science will not be known until Obama releases his detailed budget plan in April. But the budget blueprint Obama sent to Congress Feb. 26 put climate monitoring at the top of NASA's to-do list.

 

"Using the National Research Council's recommended priorities for space- based Earth science research as its guide, NASA will develop new space- based research sensors in support of the Administration's goal to deploy a global climate research and monitoring system," Obama's budget summary states.

 

Obama's 2010 budget blueprint was released on the heels of a $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed Feb. 17 that included $400 million for NASA to accelerate Earth science decadal missions and increase the agency's supercomputing capabilities.

 

A week later, on Feb. 25, the House of Representatives approved a 2009 omnibus appropriations bill containing $1.4 billion for NASA's Earth science program, including $150 million specifically aimed at speeding up NASA's implementation of the decadal missions.

 

The Senate was expected to vote on the omnibus the week of March 2.

 

Rick Anthes, president of the Boulder, Colo.-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and a co- chair of the committee that produced the decadal survey, said he is encouraged by the inclusion of money for decadal missions in NASA's budget.

 

"They clearly represent a welcome shift in priorities for NASA of the new administration, and this is very good news after years of declining budgets for Earth sciences at NASA under the previous administration," Anthes said. "Of course, many uncertainties remain — how NASA will actually spend their share of the stimulus is not known, the 2009 budget is not yet passed and signed, and the 2010 budget process is just beginning. But the sum of these could go a long way to getting the decadal survey on track."

 

NASA's Earth science budget has been eroding since 2000 while at the same time all but two of its 15 environmental satellites now in orbit are approaching the end of their design lives. Since the decadal survey was released in 2007, NASA has been criticized for not moving fast enough to implement the 15 recommended missions. Under the budget plan NASA sent to Congress last year, for example, the agency would launch its first decadal survey mission in 2013, its second in 2015 and its third in 2017.

 

"I think that we're moving ahead relatively aggressively given the state of the budget," Mike Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, told the NASA Advisory Council's Earth science subcommittee in January. "We're trying to be as aggressive as possible, trying to point out that we have to do this entire program, not just each individual mission when the budget becomes available. We're actually on the ragged edge."

 

The decadal survey called for NASA to launch the first four recommended missions between 2010 and 2013, the next five missions between 2013 and 2016 and the final six missions between 2016 and 2020.

 

Of the two decadal survey missions NASA so far has committed to building, the Soil Moisture Active and Passive mission would launch in 2013 followed by ICESat 2 in 2015.

 

In a bid to make up for lost time, Congress intends to direct NASA through the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill to spend some of the $150 million designated for decadal missions to get ICESat 2 built and tested in time to launch in 2013.

 

NASA, meanwhile, also has begun preliminary work on the other two top-tier decadal missions — Clarreo and Desdyni — and has conducted preliminary mission studies for all five missions the decadal survey penciled in for the 2013 to 2016 timeframe, Freilich said.

 

The main problem, however, has been money. When the National Research Council released the decadal survey in 2007, it said implementing the full slate of recommended missions would require NASA to devote about $2 billion a year to Earth science, considerably more than what the White House was prepared to spend. When then-President George W. Bush released his budget proposal the following year, he outlined just $540 million in new Earth science money spread over five years.

 

With Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of both the House and Senate, scientists are looking forward to more generous increases.

 

Daniel Jacob, chairman of the NASA Advisory Council's Earth science subcommittee, praised the $400 million Congress included in the economic stimulus as a step toward making up for past budgets. NASA has until mid-April to report back to Congress on how the agency intends to spend the money.

 

"I think it's wonderful that we had this stimulus. It corrects the 30 percent decrease since 2000 and it certainly makes things possible in terms of Earth science," said Jacob, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

 

However, even with a supportive White House and Congress, the total price tag for the decadal missions will make it impossible to get all of them launched before 2020, Jacob said.

 

Freilich estimates it would cost $13 billion to accomplish all 15 of the decadal survey missions. In the peak years of development, NASA's Earth science budget would need to triple to nearly $4 billion, he said.

 

With that unlikely scenario, Jacob suggests NASA should collaborate with Europe and Japan on Earth monitoring missions to tackle the global challenges.

 

"The Europeans are coming up with their own [prioritized set of missions] that's starting to look a lot like the decadal survey," he said. "We absolutely have to go back to the drawing board on implementation."

 

Berrien Moore, the executive director of Princeton, N.J.- based Climate Central who co- chaired the National Research Council's decadal survey panel, agreed that it could be time for international collaboration, at least on critical missions such as carbon dioxide measuring and mapping.

 

"We ought to give some attention to perhaps teaming up with our international colleagues," he said.

 

Moore said the administration's focus on climate monitoring is a positive step after years of neglect under the previous administration, but cautioned that without money built into future years, NASA will be unable to complete the decadal survey missions.

 

"That was the failure in the Bush years for NASA, the budget would get puffed up at first and then the out-year budgets would just fall right off a cliff. You can't implement anything that way," he said. "A key element I'm going to be looking for is not only the 2010 budget but what do the next four years look like, because it's the run- out that sets the pace."