“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 led the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) missions up through his retirement in 2022. Those words echo across scientific and industrial communities as the White House orders NASA to deorbit two functional satellites OCO-2 and OCO-3 broadly protested by the science community and clear evidence of their ongoing worth.
The OCO satellites are not just another collection of platforms in space; they are the only federally operated platforms specifically designed to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases from space. Their technical complexity is matched only by their strategic importance. OCO-2, launched in 2014, carries a high-resolution grating spectrometer to quantify the solar radiance absorbed and scattered by the atmosphere in three distinct bands: the O₂-A band at 0.765 μm, the weak CO₂ band at 1.61 μm, and the strong CO₂ band at 2.06 μm. Such a configuration enables the satellite to deliver global, high-resolution maps of atmospheric CO₂ at 1.29 km × 2.25 km resolution and with a revisit time of merely 16 days. OCO-3, launched to the International Space Station in 2019, supplements this with more extensive coverage and enhanced local measurement precision, such as measuring the “glow” of photosynthetic plants a phenomenon called solar-induced fluorescence.
The value of these flights extends far beyond climate science. Satellite data are vital to farmers, oil and gas companies, and global researchers who depend on consistent, high-quality measurements of CO₂ and the health of crops. OCO data are used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private crop advisers in forecasting crop yields, monitoring drought, and making resource decisions. The accidental finding that OCO instruments would also capture global photosynthesis has created an invaluable resource for tracking plant physiology, rangeland condition, and forest health. “NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world,” stated Scott Denning, a climate researcher who contributed to the OCO missions. These findings are now of paramount importance to national security and even to food security, as drought and crop loss spark migration and political instability.
From the scientific perspective, satellite remote sensing of atmospheric CO₂ has revolutionized knowledge of the global carbon cycle. Conventional ground-based measurements such as TCCON provide extremely accurate but geographically limited data. Satellites such as OCO-2 fill the gap, making continuous, objective, and stable observations at the planetary level. The “top-down” approach enabled by OCO data allows carbon fluxes to be estimated, distinguish between anthropogenic and natural sources, and refine climate models with accuracy never previously achieved. Presently, machine learning is applied in advancements such as the Spectrum Transformer (SpT) model, which utilizes OCO-2 spectra to estimate CO₂ concentrations to root mean square errors as low as 1.2 ppm, supporting near real-time global observation and complementing international climate policy like the Paris Accord. These instruments are important for tracking progress toward emission reductions and for checking national inventories, according to a recent assessment of satellite remote sensing approaches.
The economic calculus is stark. The OCO missions cost approximately $750 million to design, build, and launch, yet their annual operating cost is just $15 million a minuscule fraction of NASA’s $25.4 billion budget. As Crisp observed, “Maintaining the two observatories only costs $15 million per year, barely a dent in the agency’s $25.4 billion budget.” Terminating these missions would not only waste the initial investment but also risk the loss of irreplaceable, high-quality data that underpins critical climate, agricultural, and industrial decision-making.
The political climate is tense. The Trump administration’s directive arrives as a 2023 report by NASA concluded the data are “of exceptionally high quality” and recommended extending the missions for at least three more years. Congressional appropriators already signed off on paying for the satellites through the end of fiscal year 2025, and many lawmakers argue pre-emptively closing up shop before a new budget has passed is illegal. “Congress has the power of the purse, not Trump or Vought,” declared Representative Zoe Lofgren. “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.”
As NASA weighs privatizing the OCO-3 instrument on the ISS, however, experts warn that handing over responsibility to the private sector risks undermining the continuity and public access to critical climate data. Anna Michalak, a climate scientist at Carnegie Science and Stanford University, said, Those efforts would not be possible without this underlying investment from public funding. The satellites’ legacy revamping the investigation of the carbon cycle, making food and energy security possible, and informing global climate policy now hangs in the balance.
