American President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to end two key climate-monitoring satellites, including one that would be destroyed in orbit. This would severely compromise global carbon monitoring at minimal budgetary savings, and provoke both legal challenges and widespread scientific concern.
Trump plans to terminate both of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatories—OCO‑2, a free-flying satellite, and OCO‑3, an instrument attached to the International Space Station. Both satellites provide exact CO₂ monitoring and global maps of plant photosynthesis—data used not only by climate scientists but also by farmers, energy companies, and policymakers.
Irreversible loss
As part of his proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget, Trump has directed NASA to develop plans for deorbiting the stand-alone OCO-2 satellite, which will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, resulting in the irreversible loss of the mission. Popular weather apps, like the now Belgian-owned Weather Radar (Buienradar), are also expected to be affected.
The two CO2 monitoring facilities that NASA commissioned in 2014 and 2019 were a resounding success. From space, they provided a unique overview of where large amounts of CO2 were emitted and where large quantities were absorbed, for example by forests. This provided crucial insights in the fight against climate change.
NASA’s own review in 2023 confirmed the datasets were “exceptionally high quality” and recommended operation for at least three more years. Until now, scientists, farmers, energy companies, and governments have used OCO data for monitoring carbon stocks, crop health, urban emissions, drought stress, and carbon sinks.
Critical climate data
Now, the world will lose those critical climate data. The European Space Agency (ESA) also has weather satellites, but for some data, we depend on American satellites.
Trump’s decision threatens to diminish the world’s understanding of CO2 emissions. Removing publicly provided carbon data makes it harder to verify emission reductions under policies like the Paris Agreement.
Minimal savings
Once decommissioned, future CO₂ and plant health tracking from that platform ends permanently. Scientists will lose real-time, high-resolution data crucial for understanding carbon cycle dynamics, climate modeling, and tracking compliance with international emissions agreements.
Farmers will lose access to remote sensing data on plant stress and photosynthesis—tools already used for forecasting crop yields and managing drought responses.
The satellites cost approximately US$750 million to build and launch, but they now cost only around $15 million/year to operate. Terminating them would mean sacrificing enormous scientific value for minimal savings.
