U.S. Missile Warning Radars Could Squelch ESA's Proposed Biomass Mission

摘要

European Earth scientists organizing a funding competition among three finalist missions on March 5 were told that the biggest issue facing one of them is not its advanced technology, but the U.S. Defense Department's priority allocation of radio frequencies. Meeting in Graz, Austria, to select the the seventh Earth Explorer mission to be flown by the 20-nation European Space Agency (ESA), backers of the Biomass mission were pelted with questions about how badly the U.S. network of missile warning and space-tracking radars in North America, Greenland and Europe would undermine Biomass' global carbon-monitoring objectives.