Polar satellite tries to weather storm

NPOESS satellites would allow more accurate weather predictions for both military and civilian weather services.

Congress will have to make some tough decisions on weather satellite development based on recommendations from the Department of Defense (DOD) that are scheduled to land on Capitol Hill this month. Those recommendations will help legislators determine whether to keep funding deployment of the next generation of advanced polar-orbiting weather satellites or to perhaps radically alter the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program, which has badly overshot its budget because of technical and management problems.

David Powner, Director, IT Management Issues, Government Accountability Office (GAO), has testified twice to Congress on NPOESS in the past year. He says DOD officials he spoke with acknowledged that cancellation of the entire program is an option.