Assessment of NASA's Plans for Post-2002 Earth Observing Missions Letter Report (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Letter Report
Letter Report
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. Task Group on Assessment of NASA Plans for Post 2000 Earth Observing Missions Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources Board on Sustainable Development Policy Division Space Studies Board Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications CONTENTS • Transmittal Letter to Dr.
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Asrar: We are pleased to provide you with the report of the Task Group on Assessment of NASA Plans for Post-2002 Earth Observing Missions. The report was prepared in response to your request for a National Research Council assessment of NASA's candidate mission profile for the period 2003 to 2010 from the perspective of overall scientific priorities, program coherence, and scientific balance.
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Within the National Research Council (NRC) , the study was organized by the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, the Board on Sustainable Development, and the Space Studies Board, thereby providing a direct link through membership with the NRC units that had published reports with particular relevance to planning for post-2002 Earth observing missions.
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, NASA necessarily built on the very extensive heritage of NRC and NASA studies and reports, as well as 10 years of EOS Science Team operations. BOX 1 NASA and NRC Milestones Relevant to Post-2002 Mission Planning NASA RFI Announced April 10, 1998 NRC Pathways Report Overview Volume, with May 19, 1998 Recommendations and Research Imperatives, Published NRC "NPOESS and Climate Change" Letter Report2 May 27, 1998 Published NASA Deadline for Submission of Post-2002 Era June 8, 1998 EOS Mission Concepts NASA Panel Review of Submissions Mid-June 1998 August 24-26, NASA Workshop at Easton, Maryland 1998 Early Easton Workshop Results Available for Program September Formulation 1998 NRC Report, The Atmospheric Sciences Entering the October 22, Twenty-First Century, Published 1998 Easton Workshop Report ("Kennel Report")
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In addition, the agency's development and implementation of satellite altimetry and scatterometry have made today's approach to global oceanography possible. Overall, NASA accounts for nearly 75 percent of the resources made available under the USGCRP, with some 60 percent devoted to spacebased observation programs.6 Thus, NASA's directions in Earth science during the first part of the next century will be pivotal in determining the success of the USGCRP and in international global change programs such as the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, and the International Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme.
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NASA has identified five science thematic areas that reflect some of the scientific directions identified in the NRC Pathways and The Atmospheric Sciences Entering the Twenty-First Century7 reports, and that draw on the existing EOS science plan.8 The themes identified by NASA are climate change and variability, the global carbon cycle, the global water cycle, atmospheric composition and ozone, and solid Earth and natural hazards. The proposed mission set tries to address the science priorities in NASA's themes, taking into account the scientific
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Timing will be crucial for those missions where achieving maximum science benefit requires that observations from different missions be combined. The task group expects the science plan to draw from the EOS science plan, address the detailed recommendations given in Pathways and other recent NRC reports, and take note of Decision 14 at the COP4 of UNFCCC in Buenos Aires.10 The task group recommends that the science plan to
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The task group reviewed NASA's plan for post-2002 missions based on provided text material, presentations by NASA and NPOESS personnel, and with reference to the recent NRC reports noted below, especially the Pathways report: • "On Climate Change Research Measurements from NPOESS," letter, May 1998; • The Atmospheric Sciences Entering the Twenty-First Century, October 1998; • Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, prepublication copy, November 1999 (the Pathways report) ; and • Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems, February 1999.
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Although the full Pathways report, with detailed information on research and observations in each thematic area, was not available at the time of the Easton workshop, the published Overview volume presented the full set of Scientific Questions from which it should have been possible to elaborate a "focused" and "coherent" effort. The task group believes that the Easton process was hampered by its abbreviated timetable.
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. The task group was made aware of NASA's call for a high-level process to develop a national policy to ensure that the long-term continuity and quality of key data sets required for global change research are not compromised in the process of merging research and operational data sets.12 Such a process is needed to address the task group's concerns regarding continuity and integrity of certain long-term measurements.
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Conservatism is needed to give confidence that a long-term data set will be acquired, but innovation is needed to design new observational systems that will obtain previously unavailable data, obtain data that may have higher quality or accuracy, and/or acquire data at less cost in the future. The task group believes that the results of the Easton workshop gave a mission set that is balanced among the disciplines; however, it has concerns regarding other, more important aspects of balance, especially the balance between space-based and in situ observations.
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However, in executing the ESE mission scenario, NASA assumes integration of its global observation program with the National Polarorbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program.
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Additionally, including other stakeholders in the Science Integration Team will allow early discussions of joint missions and leveraging of other space research programs. Timely advice on the progress of sensor programs and on the use and integration of the data could be achieved by having the NASA mission scenarios and sensor plans reviewed externally at approximately 3-year intervals.
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However, constrained by a tight publication deadline and the absence of a detailed post-2002 science plan, the task group was unable to conduct a thorough analysis of the data set characteristics to be acquired (as opposed to the variables to be measured) in NASA's mission scenario (see Box 3)
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6. Evaluation of the efficacy of the process employed by NASA to solicit ideas and to distill them to frame the proposed mission set.
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This will require reviewing and mapping the USGCRP activities against the set of Research Imperatives and unanswered Scientific Questions presented in the Pathways report to help set optimal programmatic priorities, as well as considering implications for the research strategy from new policy developments. The detail provided in the full Pathways report that was unavailable at the time of the Easton workshop should be helpful in guiding development of science-driven Earth observation missions.
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Referred to as the Easton workshop report and frequently as the Kennel report, it is available online at http://www.earth.nasa.gov/visions/Easton/index.html. 2 National Research Council, Space Studies Board, "On Climate Change Research Measurements from NPOESS," letter report to Dr.
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19 National Research Council, Board on Sustainable Development, A Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and NASA's Mission to Planet Earth/Earth Observing System, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C, 1995.
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21 Discussed in Supporting Research and Data Analysis in NASA's Science Programs; see footnote 11. 22 National Research Council, Space Studies Board, "On Climate Change Research Measurements from NPOESS," letter report to Dr.
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(Joe) Friday, Director, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Claudette Baylor-Fleming, Senior Project Assistant, Space Studies Board
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NASA is now replanning the program to identify a set of missions to be flown in the period 2003 - 2010 after the first EOS platforms are launched. This replanning has involved solicitation of follow-on mission concepts from the scientific community and subsequent winnowing of these ideas into a "candidate mission scenario." The process used by NASA warrants review to determine how fairly and effectively it worked to recruit input from the broadest and most competent community of researchers.
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PLAN OF ACTION Statement of Task: An ad hoc task group composed of representatives from the BSD Committee on Global Change Research, the BASC Climate Research Committee, and the SSB Committee on Earth Studies, plus several additional experts, will conduct an assessment of NASA's proposed mission scenario for Earth observing missions in the period 2003 - 2010. Topics to be considered will include the following: - the extent to which the mission set contributes to a coherent overall program that addresses important science themes and priorities, - the responsiveness of the missions to scientific priorities identified in recent relevant NRC reports, - broad aspects of balance between various Earth science discipline areas, - general technical and programmatic feasibility, - identification of major scientific or technical problems implicit in the mission scenario, and - evaluation of the efficacy of the process employed by NASA to solicit ideas and to distill them to frame the proposed mission set.
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Smaller missions imply more focused mission objectives, as recommended explicitly in the "Research Pathways" report of the Committee on Global Change Research of the National Academy of Science. This strategy, based on smaller satellite missions focused on narrower and more coherent science objectives, does not imply a retreat from the goal of the U.S.
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Specifically, the Workshop was asked to respond to three overarching questions: Is the nominal mission scenario consistent with the key scientific questions formulated by national and international bodies representing the Earth System Science community? Is the balance between scientific disciplines reflected in the nominal mission scenario consistent with emerging frontiers in Earth System Science?
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1. Systematic Measurement Missions The first objective of NASA Earth Science Enterprise is to fulfill its commitment to the science community to maintain continuity of key EOS measurements, and deliver consistent time series of global observations over the period of time required by the nature of the earth system.
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The ESE would insert such preoperational instrument developments into its flight mission program by re-ordering mission priorities in the systematic measurement, discovery or technology demonstration components (New Millennium Program) of the nominal mission scenario, as appropriate.
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NASA is working closely with the NPOESS Integrated Program Office to enable similar temperature and moisture profile accuracy with the next-generation operational atmospheric sounder system that will be deployed on future operational environmental satellites. The objective of the Climate Variability and Trend Mission, given high priority by atmospheric climate research, is to continue research-quality temperature and water vapor measurements during the interim period between the termination of PM-1 and the first NPOESS flight.
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, to be followed by the ADEOS-2 mission carrying the same Seawinds instrument in the year 2000 time frame. The nominal NASA strategy for surface wind data acquisition in the long term is to rely on global measurements provided by two operational observing systems: Passive dual-polarization microwave radiometer on the NPOESS satellite series during the next decade of the next century.
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The Workshop concurred with the conclusion of the Step 1 reviewers that continuity of global ocean topography measurements has first priority for ocean circulation studies and climate research. The Workshop was concerned by the likelihood that a large data gap would occur between the Jason-1 ocean altimetry mission and the first NPOESS mission carrying a radar altimeter (early morning NPOESS spacecraft only)
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Significant periods of overlap between successive missions would allow implementing bistatic radar interferometry. NASA intends to carefully examine private sector investments in the field of global SAR observation, beyond its first free-flying SAR mission planned in the early 2000 time frame, and plans to acquire the needed scientific data through data purchase whenever possible.
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. The Workshop highlighted the importance of precision altimetry as the centerpiece of a systematic measurement strategy for ice-sheet dynamics and ice mass balance studies, and expressed concern about the expected discontinuity between the first Icesat mission and a repeat mission launched near the end of the next decade.
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For this purpose, NASA applied the same scientific evaluation, technical feasibility and cost assessment procedures to both systematic measurement and discovery mission concepts. The candidate mission concepts described below are those that emerged as particularly promising in the Step 1 review.
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. EX-2: Aerosol Radiative Forcing Research Mission A high visibility issue in climate change research is the impact of natural and anthropogenic aerosols on the radiative balance of the planet.
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at the relatively low microwave frequencies that can penetrate moderately dense vegetation. The objective of an experimental soil moisture/ocean surface salinity measurement mission would be a 3 to 5 year demonstration of an advanced low-frequency dual-polarization passive microwave radiometer or combined active/passive system in low earth orbit (to be determined by selection of competing mission proposals)
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The Earth System Science Pathfinder GRACE mission will extend this proven capability to harmonics above 100. There are strong expectations from both the solid earth science community and global oceanography community that the GRACE mission (to be launched in 2001)
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NASA intends to carefully examine and take advantage of potential commercial and international initiatives in this domain of global SAR observation with high revisit frequency and relatively coarse spatial resolution. APPENDIX 3 PROTOTYPE OPERATIONAL INSTRUMENT DEVELOPMENT The Step 1 review highlighted several projects to develop and demonstrate new sensors intended for operational applications as particularly meaningful for scientific research.
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The following is a list (no priority order implied) of instrument concepts that were discussed in the RFI process or otherwise brought to the attention of the Enterprise: The Workshop generally agreed with this new NASA approach to contributing to the development of new or improved operational observing capabilities.
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NASA has made substantial investments in the development of relevant spaceborne GPS receiver technology, as well as software for flight equipment operation and data processing. NASA has also begun to constitute an experimental GPS constellation by furnishing GPS equipment to scientific satellite missions of opportunity developed by international partners.
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Altogether, a geostationary lightning mapper holds considerable attraction for weather forecasters, but the scientific significance of such observations from one or two geostationary satellites does not match the scientific interest of global lightning distribution data obtained by the NASA-provided lightning detection sensor on TRMM. NOTE: Reprinted from Charles Kennel et al., Report of the Workshop on NASA Earth Science Enterprise Post-2002 Missions, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1998, Appendix 1.
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12:30 Lunch and discussion of Pathways report1 B Moore p.m.
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1 National Research Council, Board on Sustainable Development, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, prepublication copy, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1998. 2 National Research Council, Space Studies Board, "On Climate Change Research Measurements from NPOESS," letter report to Dr.
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WAKE, University of California, Berkeley WARREN WASHINGTON, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder M GORDON WOLMAN, Johns Hopkins University Ex-Officio Member Chairman, Committee on Global Change Research BERRIEN MOORE III, University of New Hampshire, Durham
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House of Representatives JOHN H HOPPS, JR., Morehouse College CHRIS JOHANNSEN, Purdue University RICHARD G
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