Starting back in the Bush administration, the United States has spent more than $800 million launching powerful climate-monitoring satellite technology into space.
The satellites, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions, came with huge risks. In 2009 the first launch attempt failed, incinerating a satellite. But two later missions were successful, and today the satellites are in “perfect health,” according to a government report issued in January.
Now, however, the Trump administration wants to scrap them as a money-saving measure.
It’s like buying a car “and then running it into a tree after a few years, just to save the price of tank of gas,” said David Crisp, a former scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led the missions to launch the satellites, which help monitor plant life and greenhouse gases and are used by forecasters, farmers and scientists.
He noted that most of the expense of the satellites was at the front end. “They cost a vast amount to build,” he said. But, once in orbit, “they cost a fraction of that a year to operate.” The satellites have more than a decade of life left in them, Dr. Crisp said.
In May, the Trump administration proposed to cut NASA’s 2026 budget by 25 percent and to cut spending for Earth and climate science in half. Bethany Stevens, the NASA spokeswoman, said the president’s 2026 budget aimed to realign the agency with the “core mission of space exploration.”
At other science agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation, the administration has also asked Congress to shrink spending for next year. A smaller budget request “provides ample resources to advance our mission while cutting through bureaucratic bloat and agenda-driven programs that dilute NOAA’s impact,” said Kim Doster, the agency’s spokeswoman.
Congress has resisted the Trump administration’s proposed cuts. Budget bills currently under consideration in both chambers would restore funding at all three agencies to near-current levels. Still, weeks remain before a final funding package is approved and the numbers could change.
Some agencies are already preparing to follow the president’s version of the budget, such as making plans to turn off satellites, according to two senior officials at federal science agencies who requested anonymity out of concern over retribution.
In July, 64 Democratic members of Congress wrote a letter to Sean Duffy, the acting NASA administrator, calling for the agency to not implement any budget cuts without Congressional approval.
The two satellites provide precise global measurements of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is warming the world. The data has been used in climate reports issued by both the United States and the United Nations and has been an important resource for other countries as they assess ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Trump administration has taken numerous steps to weaken or eliminate regulations and research projects designed to reduce planet-warming pollution. It has rolled back clean air and clean water regulations on industry and has moved to kill a scientific conclusion known as the endangerment finding, which provides the basis for the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases on the grounds that they endanger public health.
Before the Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions were approved by the George W. Bush administration in 2002, scientists relied on Earth-based sensors to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide. (The longest-running monitoring station, the Mauna Loa observatory, would also be eliminated in the NOAA budget proposal.)
After the first OCO satellite failed to launch in 2009, Dr. Crisp went back to Congress and won approval to try again. That produced a satellite known as OCO 2, one of the two that the Trump administration wants to turn off.
One could end up incinerating in the Earth’s atmosphere if it were decommissioned. The other monitoring device, known as OCO 3, was built out of OCO 2’s spare parts and orbits the Earth affixed to the International Space Station.
Together, the two satellites produce data that helps scientists understand where atmospheric carbon dioxide comes from, where it goes, and where plant life is thriving. The data can also be used to monitor wildfires, ocean health and agricultural outlooks.
“We built these satellites and got them approved and got taxpayer dollars to build them because they serve critical functions in commerce, in national security, in food security, in water security,” Dr. Crisp said.
Without funding to operate them, the two missions are at risk of going offline along with three older missions — known as Terra, Aqua, and Aura — that are also still producing valuable climate and weather data. Another imperiled mission that monitors the atmosphere, Sage III, has been attached to the International Space Station since 2017.
A satellite can be decommissioned in a number of ways. The youngest missions potentially affected by the president’s proposed budget cuts, OCO 3 and SAGE 3, would likely just be turned off, since they are on the space station. As for the other satellite, OCO 2, the fastest option for ending its mission would be to fly it down into Earth’s atmosphere, where it would burn up upon re-entry.
Dr. Crisp said there was another option, though it comes with risks that could damage the satellite. Essentially it would involve trying to park the satellite in a lower orbit. It would no longer be producing data, but putting it on standby in this way could potentially preserve it for future use.
Employees at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who work on the satellites consulted with him about this possibility, he said, given his knowledge of the satellite designs. Parking the satellite in a lower orbit would be a way to meet the Trump administration’s budget priorities without destroying the taxpayer investment, he said.
Still, the data stream that scientists, farmers and others rely on would be interrupted. There are no other satellites with the same monitoring capabilities.
“The measurement network that we currently have is very fragile and not as resilient as people think it is,” said Ben Poulter, a senior scientist studying greenhouse gas emissions Spark Climate Solutions, a nonprofit group. He was formerly deputy director of the Biden administration’s Greenhouse Gas Measurement Monitoring Reporting and Verification program.
This scarcity was illustrated in 2023, when the Lahaina fire devastated Maui, Hawaii. Because the timing of satellites passing over didn’t line up with the blaze, he said, “What you ended up having was one of the most catastrophic fires that the U.S. has had, and not enough observations from space.” Services provided by the satellites, like understanding disasters in real time or getting weather forecasts on our phones, he said, is “something we take for granted.”
If you terminate one satellite mission and then try to start another one, it’s scientifically difficult to account for the gap in the data, said Steve Volz, assistant administrator for the NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. “That’s why continuity and bridging missions across different generations is really important,” he said.
The United States has long been a leader in greenhouse gas monitoring technology, particularly in space. While countries like China and Japan also have climate monitoring satellites, OCO 2 and OCO 3 are more precise.
The Europeans have recently launched one satellite, MicroCarb, that has similar capabilities, and are working to launch another, Sentinel 7. “We’re riding on the shoulders of giants, to certain extent, by developing our own missions,” said Mark Drinkwater, former head of earth science at the European Space Agency.
The United States and Europe in the past have collaborated on technologies and the satellites were designed to complement U.S. monitoring efforts and to create a more complete understanding of the planet, he said.
Sentinel 7, Europe’s best bet at matching the operational capacity of OCO 2, won’t begin providing data for a couple of years.
Kenneth Chang contributed reporting.
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers climate and the environment for The Times.
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