Keith’s note: Update on the earlier post Going Out Of Business Sale For JPL Satellites: emails are circulating within JPL and NASA that mention a number of satellites that are listed as being targeted for shut down in the President’s FY 2026 budget request. NASA HQ is apparently not waiting for an actual budget. The list of satellites of the discount rack at NASA now includes OCO-2, OCO-3, SAGE III, CLARREO-Pathfinder, GLIMR, DSCOVR, CYGNSS, Terra, Aqua, Aura, and GeoCarb. Stay tuned for more bargains!
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
Right, the presidential budget request says to cancel those missions. And nasa leadership is acting (illegally I might add) to close them out now before an actual budget is signed. But do you have evidence that those closed out missions are ‘for sale’? That would be totally unprecedented as far as I am aware. Also, I think there would be a big difference, legally, between nasa owned satellites in space like aqua, aura, terra, OCO etc and those yet to be launched like GLIMR.
The use of “for sale” is perhaps a bit misleading, it is my understanding that NASA is putting out RFI’s for potential commercial partnerships for all of those. What’s the ROI and the business model? Not clear. The original mission science would not be a priority (or even part of the RFI response).