“Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data,” said David Crisp, the atmospheric physicist who developed the Orbiting Carbon Observatory instruments. His statement now resonates throughout the climate and engineering communities as the White House instructs NASA to come up with plans for the intentional destruction of the United States’ sole two federally run satellites designed to track planet-warming greenhouse gases.
At the center of the storm are the Orbiting Carbon Observatories OCO-2, a single-purpose satellite that was launched in 2014, and OCO-3, an instrument on the International Space Station. Both have the same high-resolution grating spectrometer onboard that is designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide precision at the 1 ppm level, a technical feat that enabled scientists to look beyond “bottom-up” emissions inventories and directly observe global and regional carbon fluxes. These tools have also provided an added surprise: the potential to map global plant photosynthesis by sensing solar-induced fluorescence, a weak signal given off by healthy plants. As climate scientist Scott Denning explained,“NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world,” with data now essential to farmers, rangeland managers, and agencies monitoring drought and crop yields and others.
The satellites’ contributions to climate science are profound. OCO-2’s sun-synchronous orbit at 705 km and OCO-3’s unique vantage from the ISS enable near-real-time, high-resolution tracking of CO2 concentrations and plant productivity across the globe. Their data have revealed, for example, that boreal forests in northern latitudes absorb more CO2 than previously thought, overturning long-held assumptions about tropical forests as the planet’s primary carbon sinks. The satellites’ ability to detect short-term fluctuations, such as the 3% to 13% drop in Northern Hemisphere CO2 growth during the COVID-19 lockdowns, has provided the first direct evidence of the impact of human activity on atmospheric composition using satellite-based inversion modeling.
Data not only are crucial for climate science but also for applied uses in agriculture, energy, and national defense. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and private agricultural businesses utilize OCO data to make predictions of crop production and track drought, and oil and gas companies use the measurements to monitor emissions and guide mitigation efforts. As Anna Michalak of Carnegie Science and Stanford University said, The value of these observations is just increasing over time. These are missions that are still providing critical information.
However, even after a 2023 NASA review declared the information to be “of exceptionally high quality” and at least three further years of functioning advised, the Trump administration has instructed NASA to develop “Phase F” termination plans. If put into practice, the independent OCO-2 satellite would be deorbited and destroyed, disintegrating in the atmosphere a procedure that, though within revised orbital debris mitigation standards, would destroy a one-of-a-kind scientific tool for $15 million per year in operating expenses, a pittance of NASA’s $25.4 billion budget and considerably less than the $750 million already spent on the missions.
The technical standards for satellite decommissioning have come a long way. The FCC’s new “five-year rule” mandates deorbiting of non-geostationary satellites in low-Earth orbit within five years from mission conclusion, a change from the earlier 25-year standard. Deorbiting systems, both active and passive like drag sails and propulsion maneuvers are now commonplace for mitigating collision threat and avoiding space debris in the increasingly congested LEO environment. OCO-2, with its strong attitude control and propulsion systems, is well capable of controlled deorbit, in accord with international best practices and minimizing the chance of forming new fields of debris.
Termination of these missions is not just a scientific loss, but a loss of U.S. leadership in space-based Earth observation. As Senator Chris Van Hollen explained, “Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters.” The satellites’ distinctive datasets support not just scholarly studies but also policy choices, emissions monitoring, and global climate treaties.
The larger context shows a tension between political priorities and scientific imperatives. Although the White House has indicated a wish to roll back federal climate programs, Congress has thus far continued to fund the OCO missions until the end of fiscal year 2025. Legislators warned that moving to cut off missions prior to congressional authorization amounts to unlawful impoundment of appropriated funds, a accusation that puts high stakes on this policy struggle.
As NASA weighs bids from private industry and universities to assume responsibility for keeping the OCO-3 instrument on the ISS, concerns are raised about the fate of public climate data and the prospect of fragmenting a one-time unified scientific resource. “On the one hand the private sector is really starting to have a role,” Michalak noted, but the threat is that privatization might restrict access to essential datasets for scientists, farmers, and policymakers alike.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatories are a testament to decades of scientific and engineering cooperation, their sensors giving Earth a global view of its most pressing environmental problem. The intentional destruction of these satellites, amidst far more than mere technical, economic, and societal worth, would have consequences far beyond the launchpad.
