Northrop Grumman has stopped some work on the next generation of U.S. weather satellites as civilian and military space officials decide how to proceed under the Obama administration's decision to terminate and divide the program among three government agencies.

Artist's concept of an NPOESS satellite. Credit: Northrop Grumman

"The Integrated Program Office has temporarily stopped selected items while NOAA and the Air Force conduct reviews of their paths forward," said Lon Rains, a Northrop Grumman spokesman.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Air Force jointly manage the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS. The White House decided the cancel NPOESS after numerous delays and cost overruns that made the program the subject of Congressional ridicule and high-level government investigations.

NPOESS satellites would not have begin launching until 2014, at the earliest. The projected cost of the NPOESS program had more than doubled to $13.9 billion at the time of the Feb. 1 announcement to scrap the system.

Funding in the White House's fiscal year 2011 budget request includes money to close out the program and terminate the Air Force's contract with Northrop Grumman, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said March 17 in testimony to a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Gary Payton, head of the Air Force's space programs, is preaching caution as the military studies how it will replace the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Northrop Grumman has already finished a large slice of the systems engineering and design work necessary for a new weather satellite constellation, so it does not make sense to prematurely cancel the company's NPOESS contract, Payton said in an interview Thursday.

"That's why I'm hesitant to turn our back on the Northrop Grumman design until we really know what we need," Payton said.

In the meantime, the Air Force is studying what weather data the military will need in the next couple of decades.

"We have not yet terminated the contract because, depending on the requirements scrub we do over the next several weeks, their spacecraft design and their spacecraft workforce could be applicable to the bird that comes after DMSP," Payton said.

A Northrop Grumman spokesperson told Spaceflight Now about 1,200 company employees are working on the NPOESS program.

"We need to continue that work for both NASA's utility and the Air Force's utility because sensors that the Air Force will need will probably be very similar to the sensors that are under construction right now," Payton said in testimony before a Senate subcommittee on March 10.

"Northrop Grumman welcomes the opportunity to continue to support the DoD weather mission with spacecraft designed to meet their next-generation needs," Rains said in a written statement.

NOAA and the Air Force are approaching the NPOESS cancellation in very different positions.

The Air Force has two more DMSP satellites scheduled for launch in 2012 and 2014, and Payton said DMSP follow-on spacecraft should be ready for launch by 2018.

NOAA was directed to begin designing a replacement program called the Joint Polar Satellite System. The JPSS satellites would be based on the NPOESS Preparatory Project spacecraft, a hybrid mission to fill the gap between heritage and next-generation platforms and test new instrument technologies.

The civilian weather agency is not yet facing a gap in coverage, but NOAA has already launched its last operational polar-orbiting satellite. Because of the NPOESS delays, the NPP demonstration satellite will be thrust into a gapfiller role next year to ensure NOAA's fleet continues collecting weather data.

Officials expect the first JPSS satellite to launch around 2015 in the afternoon orbit. Europe's MetOp weather satellites provide coverage in the mid-morning orbit, while the military's needs are sharply focused on the early morning orbit.

Satellites in all three orbits are necessary to gather data for medium- and long-range climate and weather models.

"Strategic Command in Omaha has been very adamant, very loud and clear, about not tolerating a gap," Payton said. "That's why I want a very aggressive acquisition program for that follow-on to DMSP, so that we can show the warfighter that we're doing everything we can to prevent a gap in that morning orbit."