The US Government Accounting Office today issued a report saying that gaps in satellite weather coverage are at high risk. The Joint Polar Satellite System that is supposed to replace the previous generation Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites have been behind schedule and over budget for at least three years. The GAO report estimates that the current JPSS prototype in orbit will last three years while the NASA/NOAA authority that build and run the systems say it will last a total of five years. Cost overruns, missed project milestones, technical and management problems associated with the five sophisticated sensors that make up the JPSS in the GAO report. The report also predicted that there might be a 17 to 53 month gap between the failure of the current prototype and the first JPSS. A the chief of the World Meteorological Organization's space observation program warned that as much as 40% of the data used in current weather forecast models would be lost if polar coverage is lost.
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