I'm headed out to Vandenburg AFB on Monday to prep a weather satellite for launch. Originally the NPP satellite was supposed to be a proof of concept mission for the next generation of weather satellites which are now called JPSS. These satellites were originally managed by NASA, NOAA, and the US Military in a joint project. As you could guess management was a complete cluster and what should have taken ~5 years has taken 10. Costs went out of control as well. Fortunately someone in our government realized how stupid the creation of the three headed management monster was and canceled the original program. Now it's back to how it's always worked in the past - NASA/NOAA are responsible for the civilian sats and the military is responsible for their own.

The unfortunate problem now is funding for JPSS has been stalled due to the budget battles in DC. Unless funding gets rolling for JPSS-1 in the very near future we will have a 1 to 2 year gap in weather monitoring. If we don't get our act together quickly we'll either be buying weather data from European countries or we will find out what it's like to not have weather prediction services.