Crucial Arctic monitoring satellites are blinking out just when we need them most

For 18 years, a fully-built, ready-to-launch weather satellite sat inside a Lockheed Martin facility near Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California. Scientists were waiting for the spacecraft to be called into active duty since it was completed during the Clinton administration. 

A different order from Washington arrived instead. 

Because of resistance in Congress — particularly from Rep. Michael Rogers of Alabama, who chairs a key House Defense subcommittee — Capitol Hill told the Air Force to take the satellite apart. 

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