Good Thing We Waited 14 Years to Launch Goresat

Al Gore’s dream spacecraft gears up for launch, Nature
“For Jay Herman, an atmospheric scientist at Goddard and EPIC instrument scientist, the delay has a silver lining: the refurbishment revealed a manufacturing defect in EPIC that would have let in stray light and potentially ruined its image of Earth. The delay allowed enough time to study the problem and correct for it. “So in some ways,” says Herman, “I’m very glad it did not fly 14 years ago. Because it might have been embarrassing.”
Keith’s note: Wow. It was a good idea to wait 14 years after all – imagine another Hubble-like embarrassment for NASA? It will be interesting to see how NASA calculates the total cost of Goresat/DSCOVR- from inception to final launch. I doubt they can. And if they do, they’ll lowball it to avoid another form of embarrassment.