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TOWARD NEW PARTNERSHIPS IN OCEAN SCIENCES 41 



1980s is about to pay off in a surge of data from missions using 

 satellites that will fly in the 1990s. Considerable expertise and 

 experience now exist both within the NASA centers and in the 

 nonfederal laboratories and universities — almost all of which can 

 be attributed to the far-sighted NASA policies of a decade ago. 

 The only parameter strongly recommended by the ocean commu- 

 nity for measurement in the 1990s that is not included in present 

 plans is Earth's gravity field; this oversight needs to be rectified 

 by joint discussions between NASA and the European Space Agency. 



As we look beyond the 1990s and well into the twenty-first 

 century, a favorable outlook is not so clear for ocean satellite 

 measurements. In the past several years, NASA has focused pri- 

 marily on EOS, a series of satellites aimed at contributing to glo- 

 bal change research. EOS's task is to provide a wide variety of 

 data in the late 1990s, but limited budgets are reducing the num- 

 ber of instruments and delaying the launch of others. Certain 

 segments of the ocean community have been involved in EOS 

 planning, but the connection is not as broad as it should be. Moreover, 

 the oceans branch at NASA headquarters has been subsumed into 

 EOS planning, thus eliminating the focal point for ocean interests 

 within NASA. 



With this lack of focus, it is more difficult for ocean science to 

 be heard regarding ocean priorities in space measurements. As a 

 result of recent EOS downsizing, ocean instruments have lower pri- 

 ority, and the missions needed for broad coverage of ocean param- 

 eters in the twenty-first century are not well defined. If long-term 

 planning does not begin soon, the required missions will not be 

 available to provide continuity with missions flying in the 1990s. 



Another problem is alluded to in the discussion of NOAA. 

 For climate purposes, long continuous time series of ocean mea- 

 surements must be sustained. Because of the requirement for 

 open-ended measurements, the measurements resemble operational 

 ones. Traditionally, NASA has asserted that it did not make op- 

 erational measurements — that the technology would be transferred 

 to NOAA for that purpose,- but NOAA has not received adequate 

 funding even for the limited measurements to be made from the 

 polar and geostationary operational environmental satellites. A 

 closer connection is needed between NASA and NOAA in the 

 transition from research to operations. This problem has been 

 identified by several national advisory committees,- it was brought 

 to the attention of the responsible interagency committee, the 

 National Space Council, and is being debated there. Because glo- 



