Nasa’s Earth observation capacity is under threat
BBC News reports here: At a time when climate change impacts are accelerating, our ability to observe those impacts from space is deteriorating. Cuts in US government funding for Nasa programmes will dramatically weaken scientists’ capacity to monitor and understand the planet’s climate; at least, so says a major study from the National Research Council (NRC), published earlier this year. If present trends continue, they conclude, by 2015 the number of US Earth-observing satellite missions will be reduced by half, putting the scientific systems they support “at risk of collapse.”