ESA official on NASA cuts and Earth observation

What BBN said about it

1. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe European Space Agency's Earth observation chief, Simonetta Cheli, says the politics around watching the planet are shifting, according to Live Science.

2. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorShe said, quote, "We used to go to the climate conferences together. We are not anymore."

3. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorThat's a very polite way of saying the car pool's dead.

4. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe background is NASA's proposed budget cut. The Planetary Society says it would end fifteen partner-led missions, including several led by ESA.

5. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorFifteen.

6. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorAnd one of them, per The Space Review, is Sentinel-6C, a third spacecraft studying sea level rise.

7. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorA Senate committee advanced a bill that rejects the cut, though.

8. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorEurope's carrying on regardless. Cheli says ESA is building sixty-eight satellites in a constellation called IRIDE, and thirty-nine are already up. Lovely.

9. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorMore things to hit each other.

10. 

    Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorShe does say ESA has had to move its satellites out of the way of collisions more often over the last four or five years.

11. 

    Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorSo the only thing in orbit that gets a daily commute rush hour is a satellite.

12. 

    Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorAnd Copernicus takes in five hundred terabytes a day, so someone will have the footage when two of them meet.

13. 

    Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorFive hundred terabytes a day, and the one thing nobody can see is the empty seat on the bus to the conference.