Continuing Independent Assessment of the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System

Opening Statement By Chairman Brad Miller

Good afternoon. Today, the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight will receive two reports on the perennially unsettled National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The Science Committee, under the leadership of former Chairman Boehlert and current Chairman Gordon, has devoted years of oversight to this program. Despite our relentless pressure to get this program under control, we meet again to learn that the NPOESS satellites are facing another schedule slip and that the total expected cost has grown an additional billion dollars.

The Committee’s first hearing on this subject was in 2003, my first year in Congress. At that time, the first NPOESS satellite was projected for launch in 2009. Here we are in 2009, and six years of effort have gained us only one year of progress; now the first NPOESS satellite is slated to fly in 2014.

If my math is correct, at this rate we will not get an NPOESS satellite ready for launch until 2039.

That is obviously unacceptable. The delays and cost overruns we will hear about today are not the most important news from this hearing; the most important news is what steps need to be taken to reorganize the management of this program in order to guarantee a successful launch in 2014.

To help us understand what must be done, two independent groups will give us the results of their recent work. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) team represented by Mr. David Powner has given the Committee invaluable help overseeing NOAA's satellite programs. We are also fortunate to welcome today Mr. Tom Young, who has found it hard to enjoy retirement with all of the investigations of Government space programs he has been asked to lead in recent years. He will present the findings of an Independent Review Team that has just completed its review of NPOESS program management. Both Mr. Powner and Mr. Young have recommendations for the Congress and the Administration regarding how to restructure the management of this program to get it back on track.

Our third witness, NOAA Deputy Administrator Mary Glackin, has recently taken on the difficult task of trying to shepherd NPOESS to a successful conclusion. Serving as deputy administrator since December of 2007 means she should have some historical perspective on all of the questions facing NOAA and the Administration. Fundamentally, we hope she will help shed light on why the last Director of OSTP failed to make decisions on this project that are now left to the new Administration.

I think that Mr. Young, Mr. Powner and Ms. Glackin will all agree that NPOESS now needs key guidance that only the White House can deliver. As a project shared among three agencies - the Department of Defense, NASA and NOAA - NPOESS is cursed by too many cooks and no agreed upon recipe for the proper mission for the program. Only the White House can settle these differences and carve a clear path forward. The Subcommittee asked OSTP to send a representative today, but unfortunately a national security exercise has kept all senior OSTP staff occupied today.

When it comes to NPOESS, it has been years since we had the luxury of time for making decisions. NOAA recently made its last polar satellite operational. Its predicted lifetime is five years. With every passing month, GAO reminds us that we get closer to the probability of a data interruption in weather data as well as the certain interruption in climate data. NOAA primarily pins its hopes to avoiding a data gap by using the NPP satellite - which was never intended as an operational satellite - as a gap-filler. I would feel more confident with that plan if the NPP launch schedule was not also slipping, and if we actually knew whether its primary instrument was going to work.

On March 12, speaking to state officials about the Recovery Act, President Obama said, "If we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it." Unfortunately, we’ve seen money misspent on NPOESS, but stopping NPOESS is not an option. NPOESS may be a mess and it may have been mismanaged, but the American public needs the data produced by NPOESS in order to have accurate weather forecasts, and the world needs the climate data that would be collected by NPOESS to continue to understand how our climate is changing. Cancellation is not an option and failure is unacceptable. If we do not have NPOESS, we will need something very much like it. We will spend our time today trying to deal with the program as it is, determine where we need to go and decide how we will get there from here.
 

Witnesses

Panel

0 - Mr. David Powner
Director Information Technology Management Issues Government Accountability Office Information Technology Management Issues Government Accountability Office
Download the Witness Testimony

0 - Mr. Tom Young
Chairman NPOESS Independent Review Team NPOESS Independent Review Team
Download the Witness Testimony

0 - Ms. Mary Glackin
Deputy Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere and Deputy Administrator National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin
Download the Witness Testimony