Trump orders NASA to destroy important data collecting satellite
The White House has instructed NASA employees to terminate two major, climate change-focused satellite missions.
As NPR reports, Trump officials reached out to the space agency to draw up plans for terminating the two missions, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatories. They've been collecting widely-used data, providing both oil and gas companies and farmers with detailed information about the distribution of carbon dioxide and how it can affect crop health.
One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated. Worse yet, the two observatories had been expected to function for many more years, scientists working on them told NPR. A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they'd been providing had been "of exceptionally high quality."
The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions.
Former NASA employee David Crisp, who worked on the Orbiting Carbon Observatories' instruments, told NPR that current staffers reached out to him.
"They were asking me very sharp questions," he said. "The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan."
Crisp said it "makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency's $25.4 billion budget.
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | August 5, 2025 9:58 PM
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This is SO interesting, because I'm just this minute listening to a podcast on the Murdaugh case, and the lawyer-host is going into detail on exactly how South Carolina investigators were able to utterly SHRED Alec Murdaugh's alibi and sworn testimony by using the exact info/data/measurements provided by the very satellite technology Trump means to destroy and eliminate.
Fuuuuuuccckkk.
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | August 5, 2025 8:11 PM
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Predictable Trump move: destroy anything that could gather or promote evidence that he is wrong about something. And, like most of his destructive behavior, it will be a great loss to humanity.
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | August 5, 2025 8:18 PM
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R1, wonder if those satellites can capture images of future insurrections, or detainment camps for allied criminal immigrants, transport of them via buses, flights, etc.?
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | August 5, 2025 8:30 PM
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Of course, R3, the evil fucks.
It's too bad the US public education system is so shitty, because we need a new generation of non-elite school educated, nonpriveleged kids to create and develop the new technology that no entity can control like this.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | August 5, 2025 9:28 PM
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It's really incredible how there are just zero checks-and-balances. He 100% does whatever the fuck he wants with no accountability. Baffling.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | August 5, 2025 9:32 PM
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In a normal world, no President would ever give such an order, but if he did NASA officials would (rightly) ignore it. But everyone lives in fear of their jobs...
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | August 5, 2025 9:34 PM
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Russia is howling with glee as we dismantle our security sector, China laughing as we destroy high tech research
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | August 5, 2025 9:39 PM
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His abuse of power is the justification we should use if we take back Congress and the White House. Eliminate the filibuster (note how it did nothing to stop this), admit DC and Puerto Rico as states, pass voter protections, and peg the Supreme Court justices to the number of US circuit courts (which is 13).
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | August 5, 2025 9:40 PM
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Seriously, if American voters have any sense at all, after what’s occurred this past six months, Republicans wouldn’t get back into power for a generation.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | August 5, 2025 9:50 PM
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Nope for Puerto Rico, R9! Many are conservatives, just like Cubans.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | August 5, 2025 9:55 PM
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