10 ms·

Loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back 'decades'

312 points by trauco 1y ago

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
“Researchers say the satellites themselves are operating normally and do not appear to have suffered any errors that would physically prevent the data from continuing to be collected and distributed, so the abrupt data halt might have been an intentional decision.” Wait, the U.S. aren’t even going to try selling the satellites? We’re just scrapping them?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  The intent is to disable the capability to ignore the data. If you allow access to someone else, you're not preventing the data capture and dissemination. If the data shows hurricanes are intensifying in strength due to climate change, and you no longer capture the data, you can say with a straight face "No it isn't and you can't prove it." How large systems with exposure to these places (insurance, capital markets) respond is what you should look to next. What do you do when you don't have the data to accurately price risk? Relevant comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43366311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43366311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42450680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42450680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664750 (top comment of this thread aggressively relevant)
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    I think it’s even more nefarious than that. They can attack other countries that claim intensifying climate and weather scenarios by saying their data is biased while claiming to have the best data in the world but not share for national security reasons. While this may seem like something unbelievable to you or me it is easily eaten up by their supporters who love propaganda. Like, my republican parents are convinced robotaxi is amaxing after the unreasonably bad debut in Austin. They simply didn’t hear or want to hear that Tesla would not produce a working product.
    - whatshisface 1y ago
      They could claim that even with the satellites. The "alternate reality" can be anything - if facts aren't inserted into it the people inside won't know.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        Idiots will buy it. The courts won’t. Cutting off the data stymies the latter.
        pstuart 1y ago
        The courts are compelled to defer to SCOTUS, which has demonstrated that it is ideologically aligned with the regime.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > SCOTUS, which has demonstrated that it is ideologically aligned with the regime If you read SCOTUS's opinions this is obviously false. Alito and Thomas are bought. But the others have their own quirks and agendas.
        tialaramex 1y ago
        You could probably imagine that ACB is just very stupid I guess? She's made choices which only make sense if they're out of blind loyalty to the man who gave her a job she shouldn't have or because she's not smart enough to understand the consequences. For ordinary people it can feel reasonable to keep your head down and hope that somehow this blows over. But for SCOTUS it's entirely within their power to draw a line, and it seems like at best their idea has become "Maybe if we give him what he wants he'll go away?" which is dumb, Kipling wrote his famous poem "Dane-geld" about this, it's well over a century old and it's about a mistake England (or rather one of its Kings) made last millennium (when he wrote it, ie now over 1000 years ago).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > What do you do when you don't have the data to accurately price risk? Insurance companies will just be sending up their own satellites, and that is the true goal. Force people to pay money to private entities for a service that used to be provided by the government for free. Functionally, in such a system there is no difference between that and regular taxes, just in a private system there's opportunities for those in power (because you gotta have a lot of money to send up a powerful satellite) to make even more money. With the current US administration, always look at the grifting opportunities, that will explain virtually all policy decisions.
    - wk_end 1y ago
      (…and guess who’s company they’ll be contracting those launches to?)
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - cma 1y ago
      SpaceX earns less money if we don't relaunch what we already have, and they have a satellite design division, Musk is somewhat on the outs with the admin right now but was behind lots of the cuts like this. On the other hand, in the first Trump admin the AccuWeather spam site guy was trying to restrict NWS data to private companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers I think AccuWeather opposed the Project 2025 plan to remove weather tracking frothe government though, they just wanted it to be tax payer paid but exclusively provided to corporations for sale to make competitive upstart weather sites harder to establish (you can bid more if you already have lots of users, without them you have to build something so great and potentially profitable that you can get VC to fund your purchases of the data). https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/07/accuweather-rejects-project-2025s-national-weather-service-noaa-plans.html https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/07/accuweather-rejects-pr...
      - cma 1y ago
        And here it is: https://spacenews.com/spacex-scores-81-6-million-space-force-contract-to-launch-weather-satellite/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-scores-81-6-million-space-force...
  - computerthings 1y ago
    [dead]
  - tekknik 1y ago
    To what end? What is the benefit of shutting down and ignoring data when for the last decade and a half even with data didn’t matter? I didn’t matter before why would it now?
    - JeremyNT 1y ago
      This is a very reasonable question. When you control the propaganda that lies between the data and the public, the underlying availability of the data is irrelevant. The propaganda already overwrites the data. Honestly I would suspect that limiting the data is a strategic asset. The US can use its knowledge of weather events as leverage to cow other countries, or a weapon against countries it dislikes. "Hello <other_country>, are you worried about the impact of weather on your population? Lower your tariff rate on us and we will be glad to help give you advanced warnings so you evacuate your people" And likewise they would completely withhold such data from "enemy" countries.
  - xnx 1y ago
    There are a lot of things that Republicans hate, but truth and facts must top the list.
- timewizard 1y ago
  That claim does not seem justified. > 2016 failure of DMSP 19 without replacement[edit] On 11 February 2016, a power failure left both the command-and-control subsystem and its backup without the ability to reach the satellite's processor, according to the U.S. Air Force Space Command investigation released in July 2016 that also announced that DMSP 5D-3/F19 was considered to be 'lost'. The satellite's data can still be used, until it ceases pointing the sensors towards the Earth. The satellite was the most recent on-orbit, having been launched on 3 April 2014.[15] > The failure only left F16, F17 and F18 – all significantly past their expected 3–5 year lifespan – operational. F19's planned replacement was not carried out because Congress ordered the destruction of the already constructed F20 probe to save money by not having to pay its storage costs. It is unlikely that a new DMSP satellite would be launched before 2023; by then the three remaining satellites should no longer be operational.[16] To anyone acting as if this is a surprise or they're suddenly caught out and have to switch to another provider, I have to wonder, with the writing on the wall for 8 years now, how have you not already updated your plans? That's the guardian for you. Remove context. Generate hyperbole. Beg for money.
  - mlyle 1y ago
    The article mentions the three remaining operational satellites. Generally, you use space hardware until it dies, which is hopefully well beyond the design life.
  - counters 1y ago
    > To anyone acting as if this is a surprise or they're suddenly caught out and have to switch to another provider, I have to wonder, with the writing on the wall for 8 years now, how have you not already updated your plans? That doesn't accurately capture the reason why there's outrage here. In the weather community, we're constantly thinking through contingencies because a great deal of things are out of our control - and we rely on aging infrastructure, much of which is already flaky to begin with. Data outages and data loss happens. But there's no reason to allow a _preventable_ data loss to occur. The DMSP data is still being collected, it's just not being distributed downstream. And the decision to make this policy change was seemingly done rapidly and with no input or feedback from the user community of this data - both inside and outside the federal government. There's no reason to turn off the spigot of this data. And there certainly is no reason to do so abruptly and with virtually no notice. As a consequence, the community is limited in its ability to adapt. For instance, it would take time (and money) to spin up more hurricane hunting resources to replace the overpass data that the SSMI/S instrument captures. Some private companies operate PMW satellite constellations and we could accelerate the acquisition of these data, but there are limited (read: none) federal mechanisms to do this and due to vertical integration in the weather industry, the operators of these constellations may not actually be inclined to do so - and certainly won't do so on the cheap, especially for the federal government. So this isn't hyperbole. This is a really big deal. It might not be visible to you, but there is a panic and scramble occurring in the weather community to figure out what to do from here. And for the record - yes, the same panic would happen if the DMSP satellites failed suddenly due to natural causes. But this current situation could've - and should've - been prevented.
- ars 1y ago
  This story is NOT TRUE. There is one operating satellite in this constellation, and congress voted to shut down the program in 2015. The DMSP program was discontinued in 2015 by a vote in congress[1]. Virtually every working stallelite in this program has failed. As best as I can tell there's just a single working one specifically NOAA-19[2]. Instead the program has switched to JPSS[3] which is part of GEOSS[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program#Photo_gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satelli... (scroll up slightly) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Earth_Observation_System_of_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Earth_Observation_Syste...
  - trauco 1y ago
    The key facts are: - DMSP satellites are up and measuring data - These data will continue to be measured after Monday - the government is discontinuing processing and public access to the data - This will impact our capacity to predict hurricanes and monitor sea ice. Which of the above are “not true”?
  - IAmGraydon 1y ago
    While you're correct that Congress voted to phase out the program, you're wrong on a number of levels. First, NOAA-19 is not a DMSP satellite. Second, many of the DMSP satellites are still in orbit and functioning - even the very Wikipedia article you linked to shows this. There was no legitimate reason to cut off their data that we've been given. Third, JPSS and GEOS lack some of the capabilities of the DMSP, for example the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder that was still providing highly valuable real-time microwave data, including precipitation rates, sea surface wind speeds, sea ice coverage, water vapor levels and cloud properties. So to be frank, the only thing that's "NOT TRUE" is nearly all of your post.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    thank you!
- MikeTheGreat 1y ago
  It feels like the title here isn't accurate - we haven't lost the satellite at all. It wasn't destroyed, it wasn't de-orbited (on purpose or accidentally), it wasn't hacked or hijacked. Can we ask dang to change the title to something like "Blocking of key US satellite data could...."?
  - slg 1y ago
    Are you maybe skipping over the word "data" in the headline? The headline doesn't imply the satellite itself is lost, just the data coming from the satellite.
- conartist6 1y ago
  Well there's your problem. They were tracking the arctic! That means they were bad satellites that hurt people. They contradict the government's idea that climate science doesn't exist
Animats 1y ago
It's part of the Administration's war on ... Florida?
- deadbabe 1y ago
  It could help lower insurance costs.
  - whatshisface 1y ago
    Insurance companies aren't going to charge less for not knowing, they'll charge more.
  - jonwachob91 1y ago
    That's not at all how insurance companies price risk. Unknown risk is more risk, and more risk is more expensive. Therefore, unknown hurricane data is more risky and thus more expensive. If you know your car's engine is going to need replaced after exactly 100,000 miles, you know to save up for a new engine or a new car - and you know how long you have to save, so you can precisely set aside an appropriate figure every month. If you know your car's engine will die sometime within the next 15,000 miles, you know you need to start saving up immediately, but b/c you don't know when in the next 15,000 miles you have to rush your saving. If you have no idea when your car's engine is going to die, you are likely to end up dead engine and little to no savings.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years. Every year people say it will be the end of Florida as we know it. But those promised hurricanes never come. The worst is some flooding and damage at coastal areas, but it’s always anti-climactic. The real reason insurance is high is because of fraudulent claim risk. Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida. That data is useless.
      - mindslight 1y ago
        "I'm not moving the goalposts because my argument doesn't have any"
declan_roberts 1y ago
[flagged]
- linotype 1y ago
  Do they have cameras on them?
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Good grief. American KH-11 electro-optical spy satellites have 2.4 meter primary mirrors and orbit at ~300km or less. Ease yourself off the anti-Musk subreddits or wherever you're getting this incoherent nonsense.
  - mh- 1y ago
    Additional context for those unfamiliar: KH-11s are thought to weigh 30-40 thousand pounds (~20k kg). The mirror itself would dwarf anything launched for Starlink, multiple times over.
    - declan_roberts 1y ago
      Starlink is 65x closer to earth. If a geostationary satellite was 1 km away, Starlink would be ~15 meters. Dramatically different scale.
      - mh- 1y ago
        Thanks for the extra context, that's helpful. How big would the optics on a satellite in Starlink's orbit need to be to achieve similar clarity, then?
        defrost 1y ago
        A little bit bigger, the starlink sats have a uniform height, the optical spy sats with the big mirrors have a similar mean orbital height but are in elliptic orbits that come in closer, then further away. The best photos are taken closer to the earth than a typical starlink sat is. The above comment about geostationary orbits is confused .. the spy sats with mirrors relay their data out to geostationary relay sats and then back to earth ground stations. If you're curious you can read more in the wikipedia link (and other references) I linked in a peer comment.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
NOAA-20 is better and will still be available. Also from NOAA: “Noaa said they would not affect the quality of forecasting.” Decommissioning old sensors?
- macintux 1y ago
  NOAA is not safe from political maneuvering. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-project-2025-says-about-the-national-weather-service-and-noaa https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-pro...
- gtirloni 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_under_the_second_presidency_of_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_under_the_second_presiden...
- garrettdreyfus 1y ago
  https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-fore... “The ATMS sounder that remains is far inferior to hurricane forecasters than the SSMIS instrument the Department of Defense is discontinuing. Unlike the SSMIS which scans at a continuous resolution, the quality of the ATMS degrades considerably on its edges, rendering the sounder useless for most operational hurricane forecasts. The example below shows the difference between the scans from both instruments for Hurricane Erick last Wednesday, June 18th.” There is also a useful figure included.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    This figure is laterally an edge case. NOAA-21 images the earth twice a day with higher resolution
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  The Trump administration is proposing to end all NOAA climate research (alongside nearly all other NOAA research). The damage to weather prediction and climate research will go far beyond "decommissioning old sensors." We're talking about an abrupt end to nearly all science related to climate and weather in the US. Even if a future administration decides to turn funding back on, it will take a generation to rebuild the research community.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Rebelgecko 1y ago
So IIRC for the last 50 years the DMSP satellites broadcast all their data in the clear. If the program is only shutting down the ground stations and data distribution, it seems like an opportunity for some researchers to buy some SDRs and start collecting their own data. I'm actually surprised that the successors to DMSP don't meet the same needs. Or is the problem that they do and the government just doesn't share that data?
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  DMSP satellites broadcast on 2.2-2.3 GHz S-band with relatively simple modulation, making reception possible with a 1.5m dish and ~$300 in SDR equipment.
sampl3username 1y ago
Is the satellite link encrypted? Maybe radio amateurs can continue to receive its signals.
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  No encryption*. I think they broadcast on S-band which isn't necessarily compatible with a $20 hobbyist rtl-sdr, but still possible with more advanced amateur setups * Ok that's an oversimplification. They actually turn encryption on while the satellite is over certain areas. But if you're in the Continental US I think it's in the clear
schiffern 1y ago
>The loss of DMSP comes as Noaa’s weather and climate monitoring services have become critically understaffed this year as Donald Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) initiative has instilled draconian cuts to federal environmental programs. Translation: "We can't actually say this was DOGE, so we're going to imply it using emotionally charged words, and 90% of folks with bad media literacy will come away thinking it was DOGE (just check the reddit comments)." This in-vogue method of "lying without lying" is shockingly common nowadays, but apparently it's okay for media to lie because Bad Man Bad.
- cinntaile 1y ago
  What? They basically say it was the cuts by Doge?
- chomp 1y ago
  I don’t understand what you’re complaining about here. Lying?
  - schiffern 1y ago
    Yes, when the media lies it's bad. People used to understand that fact. Now media gets a free pass on certain lies because Bad Man Bad, and (evidently) people aren't even allowed to point out the lie. Hint: when the media can make up whatever they want about someone, they can quickly twist perception to make anyone into the Bad Man.
    - mlyle 1y ago
      Did DOGE not ditch hundreds of probationary employees at NOAA, cancel numerous contracts, get 1000 people to take early retirement offers, get rid of buildings, etc? And now the current funding request enacts a ~30% funding cut. I'm not sure the factual issue you're seeing. Is it that the statement wasn't definitive enough in saying that DOGE apparently was a large part of instituting these cuts? (Yes, I know OPM implemented many of these programs, but they're apparently at DOGE's request, named after the "Fork in the Road" initiative at Twitter, using data gathered by DOGE IT staffers, &c. If we give credit for any cuts, we have to give them credit for significant cuts at NOAA.)
HichamCh 1y ago
Welp, guess I'll start investing in carrier pigeons with tiny barometers. Back to the old ways!
helf 1y ago
[dead]
8bitsrule 1y ago
Is loss of automobiles and reverting to horses next?
- Frost1x 1y ago
  We can all become Amish while Bezos, Trump, etc. fly around in their privately owned 747s. Perfect society for our capital and power ownership class… that is until the hounds are at the door threatening the security of their capital or the economy downturn makes it far enough their wealth and power won’t buy the level of opulence they expect on the daily. Difficult to fly around if no one’s producing runways and jet fuel, etc.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
charcircuit 1y ago
How can it be set back decades? Even if you had to design new satellites and send them up it would not take a decade to do.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Decades is how far they were set back, not the duration of the setback.
jenadine 1y ago
Similar topic was discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 (140 comments)
softwaredoug 1y ago
The problem of important projects surviving political change is a tough one. A lot of these important projects have a single point of failure - who is the president every four years. I wonder how we build institutions and resources resilient to that? I realize privatization is an ugly word, but could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? Can we make it possible to fund initiatives in a multinational manner where countries contribute to these efforts, but if one country blinks out, then you still have it go along?
- cwillu 1y ago
  If a president can ignore the laws requiring those projects to exist, the president can ignore the laws protecting private companies from being nationalized and shut down.
- ars 1y ago
  This project was actually shut down in 2015.
- Shivatron 1y ago
  > A lot of these important projects have a single point of failure - who is the president every four years. I wonder how we build institutions and resources resilient to that? We already did. The legislative branch allocates funds for stuff that the people deem worthy. That budget becomes law. The Constitution says the "President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." There's even a specific law that prevents the President from withholding Congressionally-approved funds. What you are seeing here is not a lack of designed resilience, it's the wilful removal of that system.
- e3bc54b2 1y ago
  > who is the president every four years...could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? A president cares about election every four years. Private sector cares about it every quarter. I doubt privatization is improvement if you want to focus on long term.
- gkanai 1y ago
  > could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? Yes, but the key man problem still exists. For instance, SpaceX could build/operate a network of weather satellites for various nations but the instability of the founder leads to similar issues.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175
johanneskanybal 1y ago
I know what Hari Seldon’s conclusion would be..
irrational 1y ago
But, isn’t European data modeling of hurricanes better than that of the USA? I assume this is only the USA forecasting that is being set back?
- garrettdreyfus 1y ago
  https://www.preventionweb.net/news/which-hurricane-models-should-you-trust-2024 https://www.preventionweb.net/news/which-hurricane-models-sh... HAFS is often the best https://www.noaa.gov/news/new-noaa-system-ushers-in-next-generation-of-hurricane-modeling-forecasting https://www.noaa.gov/news/new-noaa-system-ushers-in-next-gen... European models assimilate in data from US satellites and vice versa
- wuming2 1y ago
  It still is https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/verification/global/gefs/prod/tropical_cyclones/ https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/verification/global/gefs...
e44858 1y ago
This is likely because the DMSP satellites are outdated: "In 2015, Congress voted to terminate the DMSP program and to scrap the DMSP 5D-3/F20 satellite, ordering the Air Force to move on to a next-generation system." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satelli... The GOES-R satellites seem to have equal or better resolution: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/4/4/1520-0426_1987_004_0647_iocift_2_0_co_2.xml?tab_body=pdf https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/4/4/1520-042... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-16 DMSP resolves to 600m, while GOES-R resolves to 500m (don't confuse it with the older GOES satellites mentioned in the article).
- garrettdreyfus 1y ago
  I recommend readng this article https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-fore...
speransky 1y ago
Thank you, Elon Musk
aurizon 1y ago
Someone in the USA should litigate to forestall any irreversible shut down/sunsetting of these satellites. Under automatic systems they might last until the midterms when a 'night of the long knives' might reap a huge harvest - perhaps a dual supermajority to allow for some reforms?
totetsu 1y ago
Its almost as if a totalitarian government is trying to isolate its population from objective reality, and make them dependent of the state narrative for understanding of the world.
zombot 1y ago
Did Trump stop the distribution of this data because he doesn't like what it says?

312 points by trauco 1y ago

“Researchers say the satellites themselves are operating normally and do not appear to have suffered any errors that would physically prevent the data from continuing to be collected and distributed, so the abrupt data halt might have been an intentional decision.” Wait, the U.S. aren’t even going to try selling the satellites? We’re just scrapping them?

deleted 1y ago
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toomuchtodo 1y ago
The intent is to disable the capability to ignore the data. If you allow access to someone else, you're not preventing the data capture and dissemination. If the data shows hurricanes are intensifying in strength due to climate change, and you no longer capture the data, you can say with a straight face "No it isn't and you can't prove it." How large systems with exposure to these places (insurance, capital markets) respond is what you should look to next. What do you do when you don't have the data to accurately price risk? Relevant comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43366311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43366311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42450680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42450680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664750 (top comment of this thread aggressively relevant)
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  I think it’s even more nefarious than that. They can attack other countries that claim intensifying climate and weather scenarios by saying their data is biased while claiming to have the best data in the world but not share for national security reasons. While this may seem like something unbelievable to you or me it is easily eaten up by their supporters who love propaganda. Like, my republican parents are convinced robotaxi is amaxing after the unreasonably bad debut in Austin. They simply didn’t hear or want to hear that Tesla would not produce a working product.
  - whatshisface 1y ago
    They could claim that even with the satellites. The "alternate reality" can be anything - if facts aren't inserted into it the people inside won't know.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Idiots will buy it. The courts won’t. Cutting off the data stymies the latter.
      - pstuart 1y ago
        The courts are compelled to defer to SCOTUS, which has demonstrated that it is ideologically aligned with the regime.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > SCOTUS, which has demonstrated that it is ideologically aligned with the regime If you read SCOTUS's opinions this is obviously false. Alito and Thomas are bought. But the others have their own quirks and agendas.
        tialaramex 1y ago
        You could probably imagine that ACB is just very stupid I guess? She's made choices which only make sense if they're out of blind loyalty to the man who gave her a job she shouldn't have or because she's not smart enough to understand the consequences. For ordinary people it can feel reasonable to keep your head down and hope that somehow this blows over. But for SCOTUS it's entirely within their power to draw a line, and it seems like at best their idea has become "Maybe if we give him what he wants he'll go away?" which is dumb, Kipling wrote his famous poem "Dane-geld" about this, it's well over a century old and it's about a mistake England (or rather one of its Kings) made last millennium (when he wrote it, ie now over 1000 years ago).
- deleted 1y ago
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- mschuster91 1y ago
  > What do you do when you don't have the data to accurately price risk? Insurance companies will just be sending up their own satellites, and that is the true goal. Force people to pay money to private entities for a service that used to be provided by the government for free. Functionally, in such a system there is no difference between that and regular taxes, just in a private system there's opportunities for those in power (because you gotta have a lot of money to send up a powerful satellite) to make even more money. With the current US administration, always look at the grifting opportunities, that will explain virtually all policy decisions.
  - wk_end 1y ago
    (…and guess who’s company they’ll be contracting those launches to?)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - cma 1y ago
    SpaceX earns less money if we don't relaunch what we already have, and they have a satellite design division, Musk is somewhat on the outs with the admin right now but was behind lots of the cuts like this. On the other hand, in the first Trump admin the AccuWeather spam site guy was trying to restrict NWS data to private companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers I think AccuWeather opposed the Project 2025 plan to remove weather tracking frothe government though, they just wanted it to be tax payer paid but exclusively provided to corporations for sale to make competitive upstart weather sites harder to establish (you can bid more if you already have lots of users, without them you have to build something so great and potentially profitable that you can get VC to fund your purchases of the data). https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/07/accuweather-rejects-project-2025s-national-weather-service-noaa-plans.html https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/07/accuweather-rejects-pr...
    - cma 1y ago
      And here it is: https://spacenews.com/spacex-scores-81-6-million-space-force-contract-to-launch-weather-satellite/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-scores-81-6-million-space-force...
- computerthings 1y ago
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- tekknik 1y ago
  To what end? What is the benefit of shutting down and ignoring data when for the last decade and a half even with data didn’t matter? I didn’t matter before why would it now?
  - JeremyNT 1y ago
    This is a very reasonable question. When you control the propaganda that lies between the data and the public, the underlying availability of the data is irrelevant. The propaganda already overwrites the data. Honestly I would suspect that limiting the data is a strategic asset. The US can use its knowledge of weather events as leverage to cow other countries, or a weapon against countries it dislikes. "Hello <other_country>, are you worried about the impact of weather on your population? Lower your tariff rate on us and we will be glad to help give you advanced warnings so you evacuate your people" And likewise they would completely withhold such data from "enemy" countries.
- xnx 1y ago
  There are a lot of things that Republicans hate, but truth and facts must top the list.
timewizard 1y ago
That claim does not seem justified. > 2016 failure of DMSP 19 without replacement[edit] On 11 February 2016, a power failure left both the command-and-control subsystem and its backup without the ability to reach the satellite's processor, according to the U.S. Air Force Space Command investigation released in July 2016 that also announced that DMSP 5D-3/F19 was considered to be 'lost'. The satellite's data can still be used, until it ceases pointing the sensors towards the Earth. The satellite was the most recent on-orbit, having been launched on 3 April 2014.[15] > The failure only left F16, F17 and F18 – all significantly past their expected 3–5 year lifespan – operational. F19's planned replacement was not carried out because Congress ordered the destruction of the already constructed F20 probe to save money by not having to pay its storage costs. It is unlikely that a new DMSP satellite would be launched before 2023; by then the three remaining satellites should no longer be operational.[16] To anyone acting as if this is a surprise or they're suddenly caught out and have to switch to another provider, I have to wonder, with the writing on the wall for 8 years now, how have you not already updated your plans? That's the guardian for you. Remove context. Generate hyperbole. Beg for money.
- mlyle 1y ago
  The article mentions the three remaining operational satellites. Generally, you use space hardware until it dies, which is hopefully well beyond the design life.
- counters 1y ago
  > To anyone acting as if this is a surprise or they're suddenly caught out and have to switch to another provider, I have to wonder, with the writing on the wall for 8 years now, how have you not already updated your plans? That doesn't accurately capture the reason why there's outrage here. In the weather community, we're constantly thinking through contingencies because a great deal of things are out of our control - and we rely on aging infrastructure, much of which is already flaky to begin with. Data outages and data loss happens. But there's no reason to allow a _preventable_ data loss to occur. The DMSP data is still being collected, it's just not being distributed downstream. And the decision to make this policy change was seemingly done rapidly and with no input or feedback from the user community of this data - both inside and outside the federal government. There's no reason to turn off the spigot of this data. And there certainly is no reason to do so abruptly and with virtually no notice. As a consequence, the community is limited in its ability to adapt. For instance, it would take time (and money) to spin up more hurricane hunting resources to replace the overpass data that the SSMI/S instrument captures. Some private companies operate PMW satellite constellations and we could accelerate the acquisition of these data, but there are limited (read: none) federal mechanisms to do this and due to vertical integration in the weather industry, the operators of these constellations may not actually be inclined to do so - and certainly won't do so on the cheap, especially for the federal government. So this isn't hyperbole. This is a really big deal. It might not be visible to you, but there is a panic and scramble occurring in the weather community to figure out what to do from here. And for the record - yes, the same panic would happen if the DMSP satellites failed suddenly due to natural causes. But this current situation could've - and should've - been prevented.
ars 1y ago
This story is NOT TRUE. There is one operating satellite in this constellation, and congress voted to shut down the program in 2015. The DMSP program was discontinued in 2015 by a vote in congress[1]. Virtually every working stallelite in this program has failed. As best as I can tell there's just a single working one specifically NOAA-19[2]. Instead the program has switched to JPSS[3] which is part of GEOSS[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program#Photo_gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satelli... (scroll up slightly) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Earth_Observation_System_of_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Earth_Observation_Syste...
- trauco 1y ago
  The key facts are: - DMSP satellites are up and measuring data - These data will continue to be measured after Monday - the government is discontinuing processing and public access to the data - This will impact our capacity to predict hurricanes and monitor sea ice. Which of the above are “not true”?
- IAmGraydon 1y ago
  While you're correct that Congress voted to phase out the program, you're wrong on a number of levels. First, NOAA-19 is not a DMSP satellite. Second, many of the DMSP satellites are still in orbit and functioning - even the very Wikipedia article you linked to shows this. There was no legitimate reason to cut off their data that we've been given. Third, JPSS and GEOS lack some of the capabilities of the DMSP, for example the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder that was still providing highly valuable real-time microwave data, including precipitation rates, sea surface wind speeds, sea ice coverage, water vapor levels and cloud properties. So to be frank, the only thing that's "NOT TRUE" is nearly all of your post.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  thank you!
MikeTheGreat 1y ago
It feels like the title here isn't accurate - we haven't lost the satellite at all. It wasn't destroyed, it wasn't de-orbited (on purpose or accidentally), it wasn't hacked or hijacked. Can we ask dang to change the title to something like "Blocking of key US satellite data could...."?
- slg 1y ago
  Are you maybe skipping over the word "data" in the headline? The headline doesn't imply the satellite itself is lost, just the data coming from the satellite.
conartist6 1y ago
Well there's your problem. They were tracking the arctic! That means they were bad satellites that hurt people. They contradict the government's idea that climate science doesn't exist

Animats 1y ago

It's part of the Administration's war on ... Florida?

deadbabe 1y ago
It could help lower insurance costs.
- whatshisface 1y ago
  Insurance companies aren't going to charge less for not knowing, they'll charge more.
- jonwachob91 1y ago
  That's not at all how insurance companies price risk. Unknown risk is more risk, and more risk is more expensive. Therefore, unknown hurricane data is more risky and thus more expensive. If you know your car's engine is going to need replaced after exactly 100,000 miles, you know to save up for a new engine or a new car - and you know how long you have to save, so you can precisely set aside an appropriate figure every month. If you know your car's engine will die sometime within the next 15,000 miles, you know you need to start saving up immediately, but b/c you don't know when in the next 15,000 miles you have to rush your saving. If you have no idea when your car's engine is going to die, you are likely to end up dead engine and little to no savings.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years. Every year people say it will be the end of Florida as we know it. But those promised hurricanes never come. The worst is some flooding and damage at coastal areas, but it’s always anti-climactic. The real reason insurance is high is because of fraudulent claim risk. Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida. That data is useless.
    - mindslight 1y ago
      "I'm not moving the goalposts because my argument doesn't have any"

declan_roberts 1y ago

[flagged]

linotype 1y ago
Do they have cameras on them?
lupusreal 1y ago
Good grief. American KH-11 electro-optical spy satellites have 2.4 meter primary mirrors and orbit at ~300km or less. Ease yourself off the anti-Musk subreddits or wherever you're getting this incoherent nonsense.
- mh- 1y ago
  Additional context for those unfamiliar: KH-11s are thought to weigh 30-40 thousand pounds (~20k kg). The mirror itself would dwarf anything launched for Starlink, multiple times over.
  - declan_roberts 1y ago
    Starlink is 65x closer to earth. If a geostationary satellite was 1 km away, Starlink would be ~15 meters. Dramatically different scale.
    - mh- 1y ago
      Thanks for the extra context, that's helpful. How big would the optics on a satellite in Starlink's orbit need to be to achieve similar clarity, then?
      - defrost 1y ago
        A little bit bigger, the starlink sats have a uniform height, the optical spy sats with the big mirrors have a similar mean orbital height but are in elliptic orbits that come in closer, then further away. The best photos are taken closer to the earth than a typical starlink sat is. The above comment about geostationary orbits is confused .. the spy sats with mirrors relay their data out to geostationary relay sats and then back to earth ground stations. If you're curious you can read more in the wikipedia link (and other references) I linked in a peer comment.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

NOAA-20 is better and will still be available. Also from NOAA: “Noaa said they would not affect the quality of forecasting.” Decommissioning old sensors?

macintux 1y ago
NOAA is not safe from political maneuvering. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-project-2025-says-about-the-national-weather-service-and-noaa https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-pro...
gtirloni 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_under_the_second_presidency_of_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_under_the_second_presiden...
garrettdreyfus 1y ago
https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-fore... “The ATMS sounder that remains is far inferior to hurricane forecasters than the SSMIS instrument the Department of Defense is discontinuing. Unlike the SSMIS which scans at a continuous resolution, the quality of the ATMS degrades considerably on its edges, rendering the sounder useless for most operational hurricane forecasts. The example below shows the difference between the scans from both instruments for Hurricane Erick last Wednesday, June 18th.” There is also a useful figure included.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  This figure is laterally an edge case. NOAA-21 images the earth twice a day with higher resolution
DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
The Trump administration is proposing to end all NOAA climate research (alongside nearly all other NOAA research). The damage to weather prediction and climate research will go far beyond "decommissioning old sensors." We're talking about an abrupt end to nearly all science related to climate and weather in the US. Even if a future administration decides to turn funding back on, it will take a generation to rebuild the research community.

deleted 1y ago

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Rebelgecko 1y ago

So IIRC for the last 50 years the DMSP satellites broadcast all their data in the clear. If the program is only shutting down the ground stations and data distribution, it seems like an opportunity for some researchers to buy some SDRs and start collecting their own data. I'm actually surprised that the successors to DMSP don't meet the same needs. Or is the problem that they do and the government just doesn't share that data?

ethan_smith 1y ago
DMSP satellites broadcast on 2.2-2.3 GHz S-band with relatively simple modulation, making reception possible with a 1.5m dish and ~$300 in SDR equipment.

sampl3username 1y ago

Is the satellite link encrypted? Maybe radio amateurs can continue to receive its signals.

Rebelgecko 1y ago
No encryption*. I think they broadcast on S-band which isn't necessarily compatible with a $20 hobbyist rtl-sdr, but still possible with more advanced amateur setups * Ok that's an oversimplification. They actually turn encryption on while the satellite is over certain areas. But if you're in the Continental US I think it's in the clear

schiffern 1y ago

>The loss of DMSP comes as Noaa’s weather and climate monitoring services have become critically understaffed this year as Donald Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) initiative has instilled draconian cuts to federal environmental programs. Translation: "We can't actually say this was DOGE, so we're going to imply it using emotionally charged words, and 90% of folks with bad media literacy will come away thinking it was DOGE (just check the reddit comments)." This in-vogue method of "lying without lying" is shockingly common nowadays, but apparently it's okay for media to lie because Bad Man Bad.

cinntaile 1y ago
What? They basically say it was the cuts by Doge?
chomp 1y ago
I don’t understand what you’re complaining about here. Lying?
- schiffern 1y ago
  Yes, when the media lies it's bad. People used to understand that fact. Now media gets a free pass on certain lies because Bad Man Bad, and (evidently) people aren't even allowed to point out the lie. Hint: when the media can make up whatever they want about someone, they can quickly twist perception to make anyone into the Bad Man.
  - mlyle 1y ago
    Did DOGE not ditch hundreds of probationary employees at NOAA, cancel numerous contracts, get 1000 people to take early retirement offers, get rid of buildings, etc? And now the current funding request enacts a ~30% funding cut. I'm not sure the factual issue you're seeing. Is it that the statement wasn't definitive enough in saying that DOGE apparently was a large part of instituting these cuts? (Yes, I know OPM implemented many of these programs, but they're apparently at DOGE's request, named after the "Fork in the Road" initiative at Twitter, using data gathered by DOGE IT staffers, &c. If we give credit for any cuts, we have to give them credit for significant cuts at NOAA.)

HichamCh 1y ago

Welp, guess I'll start investing in carrier pigeons with tiny barometers. Back to the old ways!

helf 1y ago

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8bitsrule 1y ago

Is loss of automobiles and reverting to horses next?

Frost1x 1y ago
We can all become Amish while Bezos, Trump, etc. fly around in their privately owned 747s. Perfect society for our capital and power ownership class… that is until the hounds are at the door threatening the security of their capital or the economy downturn makes it far enough their wealth and power won’t buy the level of opulence they expect on the daily. Difficult to fly around if no one’s producing runways and jet fuel, etc.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

charcircuit 1y ago

How can it be set back decades? Even if you had to design new satellites and send them up it would not take a decade to do.

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Decades is how far they were set back, not the duration of the setback.

jenadine 1y ago

Similar topic was discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 (140 comments)

softwaredoug 1y ago

The problem of important projects surviving political change is a tough one. A lot of these important projects have a single point of failure - who is the president every four years. I wonder how we build institutions and resources resilient to that? I realize privatization is an ugly word, but could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? Can we make it possible to fund initiatives in a multinational manner where countries contribute to these efforts, but if one country blinks out, then you still have it go along?

cwillu 1y ago
If a president can ignore the laws requiring those projects to exist, the president can ignore the laws protecting private companies from being nationalized and shut down.
ars 1y ago
This project was actually shut down in 2015.
Shivatron 1y ago
> A lot of these important projects have a single point of failure - who is the president every four years. I wonder how we build institutions and resources resilient to that? We already did. The legislative branch allocates funds for stuff that the people deem worthy. That budget becomes law. The Constitution says the "President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." There's even a specific law that prevents the President from withholding Congressionally-approved funds. What you are seeing here is not a lack of designed resilience, it's the wilful removal of that system.
e3bc54b2 1y ago
> who is the president every four years...could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? A president cares about election every four years. Private sector cares about it every quarter. I doubt privatization is improvement if you want to focus on long term.
gkanai 1y ago
> could some of this stuff be provided by the private sector? Yes, but the key man problem still exists. For instance, SpaceX could build/operate a network of weather satellites for various nations but the instability of the founder leads to similar issues.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409175

johanneskanybal 1y ago

I know what Hari Seldon’s conclusion would be..

irrational 1y ago

But, isn’t European data modeling of hurricanes better than that of the USA? I assume this is only the USA forecasting that is being set back?

garrettdreyfus 1y ago
https://www.preventionweb.net/news/which-hurricane-models-should-you-trust-2024 https://www.preventionweb.net/news/which-hurricane-models-sh... HAFS is often the best https://www.noaa.gov/news/new-noaa-system-ushers-in-next-generation-of-hurricane-modeling-forecasting https://www.noaa.gov/news/new-noaa-system-ushers-in-next-gen... European models assimilate in data from US satellites and vice versa
wuming2 1y ago
It still is https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/verification/global/gefs/prod/tropical_cyclones/ https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/verification/global/gefs...

e44858 1y ago

This is likely because the DMSP satellites are outdated: "In 2015, Congress voted to terminate the DMSP program and to scrap the DMSP 5D-3/F20 satellite, ordering the Air Force to move on to a next-generation system." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satelli... The GOES-R satellites seem to have equal or better resolution: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/4/4/1520-0426_1987_004_0647_iocift_2_0_co_2.xml?tab_body=pdf https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/4/4/1520-042... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-16 DMSP resolves to 600m, while GOES-R resolves to 500m (don't confuse it with the older GOES satellites mentioned in the article).

garrettdreyfus 1y ago
I recommend readng this article https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-fore...

speransky 1y ago

Thank you, Elon Musk

aurizon 1y ago

Someone in the USA should litigate to forestall any irreversible shut down/sunsetting of these satellites. Under automatic systems they might last until the midterms when a 'night of the long knives' might reap a huge harvest - perhaps a dual supermajority to allow for some reforms?

totetsu 1y ago

Its almost as if a totalitarian government is trying to isolate its population from objective reality, and make them dependent of the state narrative for understanding of the world.

zombot 1y ago

Did Trump stop the distribution of this data because he doesn't like what it says?