Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology are worried about the future of U.S. weather satellites, which may include a gap in coverage that could leave the U.S. without crucial satellite data for over a year.

NOAA (the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) maintains two types of satellites: Geostationary (or GOES series), which provide continuous images of the earth from a fixed point about 22,000 miles up, and Polar-orbiting (or JPSS series), which circle 500 miles above the planet and provide the images used in long-range forecasting. A legacy of mismanagement, budget overruns, and slipping deadlines means that satellites in both programs may well fail before their replacements are launched and become fully functional.

Last year, the committee commissioned the Government Accountability Office to conduct a new study into NOAA's weather satellite program. Reports detailing that study were made public today, and Representative Lamar Smith, (R-TX), who chairs the committee, says he is disappointed by the findings.

"The ability to make timely and accurate weather forecasts should be a top priority for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)," said Smith. "Unfortunately our next generation weather satellites have been plagued by problems, including dysfunctional management, delays and cost overruns. As a result, gaps in our domestic weather data could jeopardize our forecasting capabilities, putting American lives and property at risk."

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Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee Lamar Smith, R-Texas. (Photo Credit: Bill Clark/Getty Images)

Plagued by Delays

This potential for a satellite gap led both programs to be added to the GAO high risk list in 2013. They have since been the subject of regular scrutiny by the GAO and House Science Committee. Today's reports indicate that a potential satellite gap could last anywhere between 3 and 17 months, depending upon when the new satellites become operational (the GOES satellite is scheduled for a March 2016 launch.

Our domestic weather data could jeopardize our forecasting capabilities, putting American lives and property at risk.

JPSS-1 is expected to launch in 2017; JPSS-2 won't be launched until 2021 at the earliest). Satellites in both programs will require up to a year of in-orbit checks before they are fully operational.

The House Science Committee charged the GAO with investigating how both programs are doing in terms of maintaining their schedules and overall functionality. Results in the subsequent report were mixed: the GOES program appears to be on schedule, but perhaps at a price. According to the GAO, several initiatives on the new geostationary satellites have been deferred, including ones related to spacecraft navigability and another that controls data sets. 16 other initiatives may be deferred as well, leaving some insiders wondering whether the new generation of satellites will be much of an advancement from today's.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

JPSS-1 is the second spacecraft within NOAA's next generation of polar-orbiting environmental satellites- scheduled to launch in early 2017. (Photo Credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.)

System Defects on the Rise

The GAO also reported that tests of the satellite's ground system have revealed 500 defects — a 46 percent rise since September 2013. This network of stations both controls the spacecraft and processes data received from the sensors on board.

"Normally, we see the highest number of defects during the first round of testing," says David Powner, GAO director of information technology management issues and lead author of the reports. "When we start to see an increase in those defects, that's when a flag goes up."

Of particular concern to Powner and the GAO staff are 36 defects in the ground system designated as "high-priority." A detailed listing of the defects in not available but, generally speaking, they included issues with data display, poor latency, and system crashes.

The reports also cited concerns that NOAA is not maintaining a consistent defect reporting system for its contractors and that NOAA administrators have not been aware of defects. It recommended a more cohesive methodology of reporting and urged NOAA both to reduce the number of defects and add information to its satellite contingency plan.

The GAO also warned about potential schedule delays to the polar orbiting program and cited the deferred upgrade to the National Weather Service high-performance computing system as another chief concern. According to NOAA, those upgrades were not made because of risk mitigation work required after IBM sold its server branch to the Chinese company Lenovo in September.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

Technician disconnects the nitrogen purge line to the OMPS instrument prior to shipment. (Photo Credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.)

A Vulnerable System

Concerns above NOAA computer security are not new. In July 2014, The Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report that outlined significant security deficiencies in the NOAA networks, urging officials to make system updates a top priority. In October, several NOAA networks were hacked by an outside source. NOAA will not comment publicly on who might have been behind the hack (or why they covered it up for a month), but former Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) says he was told by officials in the Department of Commerce that China was responsible.

Michael Wessel, a Commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, agrees, saying that it presents significant problems to national security. "The services and data provided by NOAA can be critical to our warfighters in a potential conflict not only for basic weather-related information but also because NOAA jointly operates the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), which provides cloud cover imagery that is utilized by the Air Force."

The DMSP network has long been a major security concern, and the OIG report says it has gone years without basic updates. Because it is tied to the NOAA network, that means a hack into the DMSP is also a hack into our weather program, which has vulnerabilities of its own.

We don't know to what degree the new satellite networks will resolve these vulnerabilities: Powner says the GAO wasn't asked to investigate network security for today's reports, and the OIG has a policy of not commenting on open audits, so it's not clear whether or not they are addressing the issue either.

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"A Valuable Target"

What is clear is the fact that NOAA vulnerabilities continue to make the news. Late last year, a NOAA employee was charged by the FBI with stealing sensitive information from the Army Corps of Engineers and meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing. According to Wessel, these kinds of breaches require additional scrutiny. "NOAA's network is a valuable target that needs to undergo full security review and upgrades."

A House Science Committee aid said that cybersecurity will be a significant focus for the committee this Congress. That aid was not able to elaborate on any oversight plans at this time. According to Representative Smith, the House Science Committee plans to hold a hearing next month to review the GAO findings and to examine program management at NOAA.

In the meantime, Scott Smullen, NOAA's deputy director of communications and external affairs says that NOAA and IBM have arranged to use Cray, a supercomputing company based in Seattle, for continued server maintenance and the installation of new supercomputers.

Delays, cyber attacks, data defects

Smullen declined to answer questions about the defects in the GOES system or why the program is deferring some of the features on the two satellite programs. He also declined to comment on what NOAA is doing to mitigate network vulnerabilities like the ones that led to the hack last fall. But he did say that NOAA concurs with the recommendations in the reports and intends to implement those recommendations.

Delays, cyber attacks, data defects: It all adds up to a broken system that not only leaves America at risk for losing access to reliable weather data, but also puts our military in a vulnerable position. We reported on the weather system's issues last August, and this new report gives us an even darker outlook. New satellites may help in the long term, but there's not much we can do now to avoid a serious gap in our weather coverage.

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