On the upcoming SpaceX CRS-10 mission, a rocket will launch carrying the next batch of cargo to the International Space Station. Inside its Dragon capsule’s unpressurized trunk will be a critical Earth-facing instrument---one that maps ozone molecules and other compounds in the atmosphere. Its name is the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III, or SAGE III.
When the Dragon arrives at the ISS, a robot arm will reach into the trunk, pull out the experiment’s parts, put them together, and install them on the outside of the habitat. Scientists at NASA’s Langley Research Center will watch streaming video of their baby being assembled, breaths held till everything is in place.
Then, for at least three years, SAGE III will stare down at Earth, measuring and mapping the atmospheric ingredients that help scientists understand, among other things, how and why the planet warms and cools. Those are exactly the types of space missions that could be in jeopardy in the coming years, as the Trump administration continues active hostility toward climate research. SAGE III, launching so soon, is hopefully safe. Its observations will speak to how good a job we've done of repairing our planet---and what will happen to the atmosphere in the future.
SAGE III builds on the legacy of its grandparent and parent missions. SAGE I went to space in 1979, and its look at Earth gave a baseline knowledge of how ozone, aerosolized particles, and nitrogen dioxide are distributed in the stratosphere. In 1984, SAGE II rocketed upward and made the same measurements for 21 years. Together, the missions provide the kind of long-term dataset scientists need to understand how the down-low parts of the planet respond to the up-above changes, and vice versa.
In the 1980s and ’90s, the ozone above our heads was diminishing---globally, but especially in the infamous “ozone hole” above Antarctica. Joe Zawodny, the current program’s project scientist, says the SAGE data was vital in demonstrating that decline. Seeing such concrete effects on our atmosphere, international leaders enacted the 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty in which countries agreed to gradually stop making the stuff that eats through ozone, like Freon. After the Protocol went into effect, SAGE datasets also showed it was working: The ozone levels looked better and better.
“The science community came together with their evidence, presented their cause and effect, and legislators worldwide took action,” says project manager Mike Cisewski.
The scientists now anticipate pointing to SAGE III’s data, which they hope to begin collecting in March, for further positive evidence. “We expect ozone to have recovered halfway from its decline in the ’97 time period,” says Zawodny.
SAGE III will also measure aerosols---little particles of whatever. Most of them come pouring out of volcanoes, but they also come from blow-up desert dust, fires, and human-made pollutants. Aerosols mess with ozone, cloud formation, and climate. They actually---wait for it---cool Earth’s surface temporarily. “[That] puts noise in the temperature records,” says Zawodny. “So if you want to understand changes in global temperature, you have to account for aerosols.”
Without missions like SAGE, in other words, climate scientists would be missing edge pieces of their puzzle.
But in a political era when the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology wantonly tweets Breitbart articles denying climate change, scientists are worried about the future of Earth studies at NASA. Will there be budget cuts? Slashed projects? Or transferred ones? Trump science policy advisor Bob Walker, for instance, suggested moving home-planet research from NASA to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dave Young, the head of the science directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center---SAGE’s home institution---says this is not the first time someone has suggested consolidating Earth-science programs. It makes philosophical sense (kind of). But it doesn’t make physical sense: NOAA is not a space agency. They don’t build space stuff. In fact, NASA currently builds the satellites that NOAA uses to do things like weather prediction; NOAA just operates them. “Quite frankly, they don’t have the capability we have at NASA,” says Young. “We are the civilian space agency. Right now, without transferring a lot of assets to them---people, facilities, everything---they could not do it.”
And besides, he continues, it’s all speculation. No one knows what will happen (just try to predict 2017---I dare you).
What we do know is that the new administration has limited public communications from the likes of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior (what’s up, @BadlandsNPS). But Joseph Atkinson, NASA-Langley’s Earth Science public affairs specialist, says (at least his part of) the space agency has received “no guidance or instructions on any of our public affairs efforts.”
Yet.
So far, the only order affecting NASA, along with all other federal agencies, is a hiring freeze (Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan also made full-on freezes; George W. Bush and Obama froze certain agencies). And one of NASA’s two new presidential liaisons actually worked as an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Center (before he worked as a Trump campaign data analyst). But the agency doesn’t yet have a new administrator, a presidentially mandated plan for the future, or a muzzle on either their climate science or its communication.
And so SAGE III and its measurements move forward---toward the launch pad, toward space, toward a clearer view of our planet and its future.
Cisewski, for his part, feels excited about SAGE’s contribution not just to science and the people but also to policy. “We’ll close the loop and provide politicians and legislators with evidence that the action they took [with the Montreal Protocol] and the belief they put in us---their trust in our sound science---was founded and paid off,” he says. “It was the right action.”
And whether more sound science, from SAGE III and other Earth-watching instruments, will engender more trust and more action in this brave new world---well, that remains to be seen. But these scientists plan to put the data, and their conclusions, out there. Around six months from launch, the team will release the first batch of observations, making SAGE III’s numbers available to the public. For the good of international science community---for you and for me and for the entire human race.
