An old environmental satellite is planned to be launched “at sea,” in 2014, at the initiative of President Barack Obama. The thing, also nicknamed “GoreSat,” has been built in 1998 after Al Gore, then vice president, proposed the idea of a satellite that would perform environmental surveillance from 1 million miles between the Earth and the Sun.
Goerge W. Bush shelved the $100 million project in 2001 and ever since, the originally named “Triana,” has been deposited at the Goddard Space Center in Maryland. NASA later changed its name to Deep Space Climate Observatory or DISCOVR. In 2009 and 2010 they performed extensive upgrades to it, and this year another $3.4 million just to test it.
On Wednesday, Obama proposed spending nearly $35 million from the 2014 budget to further upgrade and refurbish the satellite. 9.9 million will be sent to NASA for the upgrade procedure and $27.3 million to the NOAA.
2014 will see the GoreSat doing what it was originally intended to – will warn us of future solar storms that can endanger power grids and other satellites and will provide climate change measurements to scientists. It will then be launched by the Air Force and run by NOAA.
