The White House Actually Ordered NASA To Destroy Two Satellites Monitoring Climate Change
One of the satellites "would burn up in the atmosphere."
Published Aug. 6 2025, 2:06 p.m. ET
As the Trump Administration works to sign profoundly impactful bills into law and make sweeping changes to significant programs, the future of any program or entity is reasonably in question. Case in point: as NASA tracks important climate changes on planet Earth, the Trump Administration has threatened NASA to cease operations for two climate monitoring satellites.
Has NASA complied with President Donald Trump's orders, or is the organization defying the White House's command?
Why, exactly, do the decision makers in the White House want NASA to discontinue the climate monitoring satellites? Does this spell the end of scientific expertise and important policy recommendations for climate change?
We attempt to answer these questions and more below to keep you better informed as to why the Trump Administration told NASA to destroy their climate monitoring satellites.
The White House ordered NASA to destroy two satellites monitoring climate change.
On August 4, NPR reported that the Trump Administration requested that NASA employees plan to end the operations of "at least two major satellite missions" which collect data used by "scientists, oil and gas companies, and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health."
It isn't immediately clear, however, why President Trump and his colleagues are seeking the termination or abandonment of such important NASA satellite missions.
Upon last review of the "exceptionally high quality" data being tracked by these satellite missions in 2023, NASA recommended the continuation of these missions for at least three more years.
Yet, NPR reports, if the plans to cease operations come to fruition, one of the satellites "would burn up in the atmosphere."
The future of orbiting carbon observatories is in doubt.
On July 2, 2014, NASA "launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide," which it labeled Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), according to the OCO-2 mission page on the NASA website.
"OCO-2 is an exploratory science mission designed to collect space-based global measurements of atmospheric CO2" year over year.
There has been "an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration by almost 20% over the past 50 years — the most dramatic change that we have ever seen in human history," according to ground observations. Paired with an increase from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million since the Industrial Age, and CO2 monitoring on Earth and in space is incredibly necessary.
Per NASA, the 400 parts per million figure represents the highest recorded data in human history.
NASA has been monitoring climate change on planet Earth.
According to NASA Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor Dr. Kate Calvin in the video above, "What we see is that the planet's climate is changing. The last years have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began. Even a little change in temperature can have big effects, and we're seeing some of those effects now."
With news that satellite missions tracking critically important climate change and CO2 data on planet Earth are ordered to be terminated, it is abundantly clear that the Trump administration wants to silence such data and eschew the ramifications of no longer monitoring these changes.
Just because some decision makers do not care about the future of the planet, doesn't mean that the devastating effects of climate change are any less real.