America’s Weather Satellites on Life Support?

Could be, according to an article published late last week at the Popular Mechanics website.  A telling excerpt:

To pull together your five-day forecast, meteorologists rely on two types of satellites.  The first sits 22,000 miles up, capturing basic information on a fixed location.  The second orbits the poles, 500 miles up, filling in crucial image gaps and, more important, providing essential information about cloud formation, surface temperatures, and atmospheric conditions—the data that help us know where a storm is heading and how big it will be when it gets there.

Those polar-orbiting satellites, a primary and its backup, are the ones in crisis.  The primary satellite—a short-term pathfinder built to test emerging technologies—was never really intended for use.  Its backup isn’t much better: an aging satellite with failing sensors that passed its predicted life expectancy last year.  We would send up a replacement now, but it’s still being built.  When it is ready, should it survive launch, it could take until as late as 2018 to transmit usable data.  Which means that, depending on when our current satellites stop working, the U.S. could be without crucial data for years.  That’s worse than inconvenient.  It could cost us trillions of dollars, and hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. 

Check out the full article, HERE.