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 (White House Orders NASA to Destroy Important Satellite). This isn’t about just two satellites floating in space. This is about deliberately dismantling the only eyes we have on our planet’s carbon cycle.
What’s Actually at Stake
Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station (Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose). The satellites aren’t merely academic curiosities. The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. That’s worth repeating: even oil and gas companies rely on this data. “NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world,” explains Scott Denning, a longtime climate scientist at Colorado State University who worked on the OCO missions and is now retired. “Lo and behold, we also get these lovely, high resolution maps of plant growth,” he says. “And that’s useful to farmers, useful to rangeland and grazing and drought monitoring and forest mapping and all kinds of things, in addition to the CO2 measurements” (Orbiting Carbon Observatory – Wikipedia).
The Numbers Don’t Add Up 🧮
From a financial standpoint, Crisp noted that it only costs $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, which is a fraction of NASA’s $25.4 billion budget (The White House demands NASA destroy vital satellite as experts warn ‘this is illegal’). That’s roughly 0.06% of NASA’s budget. To put this in perspective: An official review by NASA in 2023 found that “the data are of exceptionally high quality” and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years. The equipment is working perfectly and expected to function for many more years.
When Excellence Becomes Inconvenient 📊
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, or OCO-2, is an Earth satellite mission designed to study the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide globally and provide scientists with a better idea of how carbon is contributing to climate change (Orbiting Carbon Observatory). Starting about six weeks into its orbit, the satellite will begin gathering detailed global measurements — around 100,000 — of the Earth’s carbon every day, answering important questions about precisely where carbon is coming from and where it’s being stored. This precision matters more than you might think. Precise measurements of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide are needed because background levels vary by less than two percent on regional to continental scales. Typical changes can be as small as one-third of one percent. OCO-2 measurements are designed to measure these small changes clearly (OCO-2 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2) – eoPortal).
The Broader Context 🌍
This satellite drama isn’t happening in isolation. Overall, NASA faces a 24% budget cut, from $24.8 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion in 2026, its lowest funding level since 2015 (Dozens of active and planned NASA spacecraft killed in Trump budget request). President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to throttle the scientific ambitions of NASA, prematurely ending a host of active missions in orbit studying Earth and other planets, while also ending the agency’s work to develop their successors. The plans, released today, call for a “leaner” agency that will land “the first human ever, an American, on Mars.” But they would effectively end NASA’s long-standing role as the world leader in space science, researchers say, if the U.S. Congress follows through on them (How the Trump administration’s budget cuts could affect NASA: Short Wave: NPR). They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases. Think about that: the only dedicated federal greenhouse gas monitoring satellites are being marked for destruction.
The Legal Question ⚖️
“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,” House representative and Committee on Science, Space and Technology ranking member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told NPR. “The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds,” she added. “This is illegal.” The satellites have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends September 30.
What’s Really Happening Behind Closed Doors 🚪
Two current NASA employees also confirmed that NASA mission leaders were told to make termination plans for projects that would lose funding under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, or FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The employees asked to remain anonymous, because they were told they would be fired if they revealed the request (Climate satellites). Crisp says NASA employees making those termination plans have reached out to him for his technical expertise. “What I have heard is direct communications from people who were making those plans, who weren’t allowed to tell me that that’s what they were told to do. But they were allowed to ask me questions,” Crisp says. “They were asking me very sharp questions. The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan.”
The Bigger Picture 🔭
This isn’t just about climate science. “It sends a signal that America is stepping back from leadership in virtually every science area, including NASA. The proposal for the NASA science budget is, in fact, cataclysmic for U.S. leadership in science” (What will happen to NASA science under the proposed Trump budget cuts? – The Washington Post). “[I]f the Administration is committed to countering the growing Chinese capability in space, the U.S. needs to continue its investment in U.S. space science, not cede it unilaterally. Global space competition extends far past Moon and Mars exploration. The Chinese space science program is aggressive, ambitious, and well-funded,” the former officials said (President Trump’s FY26 Budget Revitalizes Human Space Exploration – NASA). The timing is particularly striking. Nearly 300 current and former NASA employees, including astronauts, engineers and scientists, have signed the “Voyager Declaration,” a formal statement raising alarm over recent actions and steep budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration. Trump’s proposed 2026 NASA budget cuts will cede our space ‘position of leadership to other nations’, top scientists say
Looking Forward 🚀
Presidential budgets are often wish lists rather than final reality. Presidential budget proposals are wish lists that often bear little resemblance to final congressional budgets. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Draft budgets that Congress is currently considering for next year keep NASA funding basically flat. But the precedent being set here is troubling. We’re watching a precise, cost-effective scientific instrument that provides crucial data to multiple industries and scientific communities being targeted for termination not because it doesn’t work, but because it works too well. The satellites continue their precise measurements of our planet’s carbon cycle, collecting data that farmers use for crop planning, oil companies use for operations, and scientists use to understand climate change. Meanwhile, in Washington, plans are being drawn up to deliberately burn one of them in Earth’s atmosphere. It’s worth asking: when we decide that precision monitoring of our planet’s life-support systems has become politically inconvenient, what exactly are we optimizing for?
