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EXPLORING COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES TO 

MAXIMIZE EARTH SCIENCE INVESTMENTS 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

November 17, 2015 

Serial No. 114–49 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DRAIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

HON. BRIAN BABIN, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama, 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

Brian Babin, Texas 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

AMI BERA, California 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT

HON. JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma, Chair 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

JOHN MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

November 17, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 17 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 19 

Statement by Representative Jim Bridenstine, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House 

of Representatives ................................................................................................ 20 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 21 

Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Enviorment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 22 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 23 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 24 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 25 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute, George Washington 

University 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 27 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 30 

Dr. Walter Scott, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, DigitalGlobe 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 41 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 43 

Mr. Robbie Schingler, Co-Founder and President, PlanetLabs 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 50 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 52 

Dr. Samuel Goward, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Maryland at College Park 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 63 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 65 

Dr. Antonio Busalacchi, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science 

Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 71 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 73 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 88 
Page

IV 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute, George 

WashingtonUniversity ......................................................................................... 106 

Dr. Walter Scott, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, DigitalGlobe ................ 118 

Mr. Robbie Schingler, Co-Founder and President, PlanetLabs ........................... 127 

Dr. Samuel Goward, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of 

Marylandat College Park ..................................................................................... 135 

Dr. Antonio Busalacchi, Professor and Director of the Earth System 

ScienceInterdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland ................................ 141 
(1) 

EXPLORING COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES 

TO MAXIMIZE EARTH SCIENCE INVESTMENTS 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE & 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian Babin 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space] presiding. 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
11 
12 
13 
14 

Chairman BABIN. The Subcommittees on Space and Environment 

will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Subcommittee at any time. 

And welcome to today’s hearing titled ‘‘Exploring Commercial 

Opportunities to Maximize Earth Science Investments.’’ I recognize 

myself for five minutes for an opening statement. 

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to our hearing 

today, and I want to thank our witnesses for taking time to appear 

before our Committee. Today’s hearing will explore opportunities 

for NASA to acquire Earth observation data through public-private 

partnerships, including commercial capabilities. 

NASA’s Earth Science is the largest and fastest growing of all 

Science Mission Directorate programs. In the last eight years, the 

Earth Science Division funding has increased by more than 63 percent. One reason for these budgetary increases is that NASA’s 

Earth science portfolio has expanded to include new responsibilities 

for the continuation of measurements that were formerly assigned 

to other agencies, including data continuity and application-focused 

satellite observation programs. For example, the President’s fiscal 

year 2016 budget request redefines NASA and NOAA Earth-observing satellite responsibilities. Under the new framework, NOAA 

is responsible only for satellite missions that contribute directly to 

NOAA’s ability to issue weather and space weather forecasts while 

NASA is responsible for all other nondefense Earth-observing satellite missions. 

The near-term impact of this revised framework includes the 

transfer of responsibility for TSIS–1, the Total and Spectral Solar 

Irradiance Sensor, Ozone Mapping & Profile Suite (OMPS), and 

JPSS–2 Radiation Budget Instrument, or RBI, and future ocean altimetry missions to NASA. 

Another example of increased NASA responsibilities is the Sustainable Land Imaging, or SLI program. In the past both USGS 

and NOAA have been responsible for development and operation of 

Landsat satellites. But now, NASA is responsible for three mission 

and development activities, including initiation of Landsat 9, along 

with a fourth activity to design and build a full-capability Landsat 

10 satellite. 

Given our constrained budget environment and NASA’s new responsibilities, public-private partnerships may offer an opportunity 

to lower costs and improve Earth observation data while fulfilling 

science community requirements, including data continuity. 

Over the past decade, the United States private space-based remote sensing sector has made significant improvements in technology, products, and services. Leveraging commercial off-the-shelf 

technology, borrowing ideas from the information technology community, and developing innovative low-cost solutions with high performance outcomes, the private sector is demonstrating new capabilities that could be used to address many of NASA’s earth observation data needs. 

In the past, Earth observations were associated almost exclusively with government-managed or government-sponsored projects. 

Today, commercial sources of Earth information are rapidly increasing in availability and scope. Commercial satellite systems are 
15 

now reliable sources of high-resolution Earth imagery, and commercial remote-sensing companies have greatly expanded their offerings. 

Technology is also rapidly changing. For certain types of missions, solutions can be built that are much smaller in size, much 

lower in weight, require much less power, and offer even greater 

data collection capabilities at costs much, much lower than the current systems. 

U.S. law and national policy directs NASA to advance the commercial space sector. Pursuant to the National Aeronautics and 

Space Act, NASA shall ‘‘seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.’’ NASA is also directed ‘‘to the extent possible and while satisfying the scientific or 

educational requirements of the Administration, and where appropriate, of other federal agencies and scientific researchers, acquire, 

where cost-effective, space based and airborne Earth remote sensing data, services, distribution, and applications from a commercial 

provider.’’ 

A principle of the Administration’s United States National Space 

Policy is that ‘‘the United States is committed to encouraging and 

facilitating the growth of a U.S. commercial space sector that supports U.S. needs, is globally competitive, and advances U.S. leadership in the generation of new markets and innovation-driven entrepreneurship.’’ Both the 2014 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations and the 2015 National Space Weather Action Plan, as proposed by the Administration, direct federal agencies to identify and 

pursue commercial solutions. 

Given the great potential for public-private partnerships, NASA 

is unfortunately doing very little. NASA’s Earth observation program is the largest U.S. government civil remote sensing effort and 

perhaps the largest civil remote sensing effort in the world. NASA 

currently operates 26 Earth observation satellites, with 12 under 

development. However, none of NASA’s Earth observation satellites, either in operation or under development, are public-private 

partnerships. NASA does have a program in place to procure commercial satellite Earth observation data under the 1998 Science 

Data Buy Program. But, the program has not been used by NASA 

for over a decade. 

It is time for NASA to initiate constructive dialogue with the private sector to assess the viability of public-private partnerships for 

the provision of space-based Earth observation data to meet NASA 

program requirements. Our Nation cannot afford to simply ignore 

the great potential of public-private partnerships to lower costs and 

improve the quality of earth observation data. 

There are many important issues to be discussed at today’s hearing, and I look forward to hearing the testimony of our distinguished witnesses. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Babin follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

CHAIRMAN BRIAN BABIN

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to our hearing today and I want 

to thank our witnesses for taking time to appear before the Committee. 
16 

Today’s hearing will explore opportunities for NASA to acquire Earth observation 

data through public-private partnerships, including commercial capabilities. 

NASA’s Earth Science is the largest and fastest growing of all Science Mission 

Directorate programs. In the last eight years, the Earth Science Division funding 

has increased by more than 63 percent. 

One reason for these budgetary increases is that NASA’s Earth science portfolio 

has expanded to include new responsibilities for the continuation of measurements 

that were formerly assigned to other agencies, including data continuity and application focused satellite observation programs. 

For example, the President’s FY16 Budget Request redefines NASA and NOAA 

Earth-observing satellite responsibilities. Under the new framework, NOAA is responsible only for satellite missions that contribute directly to NOAA’s ability to 

issue weather and space weather forecasts while NASA is responsible for all other 

nondefense Earth-observing satellite missions. The near term impact of this revised 

framework includes the transfer of responsibility for TSIS-1 [pronounced Tee-SiS] 

(Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor), Ozone Mapping & Profile Suite 

(OMPS), JPSS-2 Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI), and future ocean altimetry 

missions to NASA. 

Another example of increased NASA responsibilities is the Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) program. In the past both USGS and NOAA have been responsible for 

development and operation of Landsat satellites. But now, NASA is responsible for 

three mission and development activities, including initiation of Landsat 9, along 

with a fourth activity to design and build a full-capability Landsat 10 satellite. 

Given our constrained budget environment and NASA’s new responsibilities, public-private partnerships may offer an opportunity to lower costs and improve Earth 

observation data while fulfilling science community requirements, including data 

continuity. 

Over the past decade, the United States private space-based remote sensing sector 

has made significant improvements in technology, products, and services. 

Leveraging commercial off-the-shelf technology, borrowing ideas from the information technology community, and developing innovative low-cost solutions with high 

performance outcomes, the private sector is demonstrating new capabilities that 

could be used to address many of NASA’s earth observation data needs. 

In the past, Earth observations were associated almost exclusively with government-managed or government-sponsored projects. Today, commercial sources of 

Earth information are rapidly increasing in availability and scope. Commercial satellite systems are now reliable sources of high-resolution Earth imagery, and commercial remote-sensing companies have greatly expanded their offerings. 

Technology is also changing rapidly. For certain types of missions, solutions can 

be built that are much smaller in size, much lower in weight, require much less 

power, and offer even greater data collection capabilities—at costs much, much 

lower than the current systems. 

U.S. law and national policy directs NASA to advance the commercial space sector. Pursuant to the National Aeronautics and Space Act, NASA shall ‘‘seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.’’ 

NASA is also directed ‘‘to the extent possible and while satisfying the scientific or 

educational requirements of the Administration, and where appropriate, of other 

Federal agencies and scientific researchers, acquire, where cost-effective, space 

based and airborne Earth remote sensing data, services, distribution, and applications from a commercial provider.’’ 

A principle of the Administration’s United States National Space Policy is that 

‘‘the United States is committed to encouraging and facilitating the growth of a U.S. 

commercial space sector that supports U.S. needs, is globally competitive, and advances U.S. leadership in the generation of new markets and innovation-driven entrepreneurship.’’ Both the 2014 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations and the 

2015 National Space Weather Action Plan, as proposed by the Administration, direct federal agencies to identify and pursue commercial solutions. 

Given the great potential for public-private partnerships, NASA is unfortunately 

doing very little. NASA’s Earth observation program is the largest U.S. government 

civil remote sensing effort and perhaps the largest civil remote sensing effort in the 

world. NASA currently operates 26 Earth observation satellites, with 12 under development. However, none of NASA’s Earth observation satellites, either in operation or under development, are public-private partnerships. 

NASA does have a program in place to procure commercial satellite Earth observation data under the 1998 Science Data Buy Program. But, the program has not 

been used by NASA for over a decade. 

It is time for NASA to initiate constructive dialogue with the private sector to assess the viability of public-private partnerships for the provision of space-based 
17 

Earth observation data to meet NASA program requirements. Our nation cannot afford to simply ignore the great potential of public-private partnerships to lower costs 

and improve the quality of earth observation data. 

There are many important issues to be discussed at today’s hearing. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our [distinguished] witnesses. 

Chairman BABIN. I now recognize the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Maryland, for an opening statement. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, and good morning and welcome to our distinguished panel of experts. 

I want to start by thanking the Chairmen Babin and Bridenstine 

for calling this hearing on ‘‘Exploring Commercial Opportunities to 

Maximize Earth Science Investments.’’ I also want to thank in advance our Ranking Member on the Environment Subcommittee, 

Ms. Bonamici, for sitting in the chair when I slip away in just a 

few minutes, so I appreciate that. 

Earth observations support a myriad of applications to meet critical national needs, whether they be related to national security, 

weather forecasting, agricultural production, land use management, energy production, or protecting human health. Earth observations also support the scientific research and modeling that we 

hope can someday provide us with a comprehensive understanding 

of the Earth and its response to natural and human-induced 

changes. 

The collection of Earth observations data has been enabled by 

sustained federal investments, investments that I hope we will continue to sustain even in the midst of budgetary constraints. Those 

investments have enabled the development of a robust, value-added 

industry dedicated to turning Earth observations data into usable 

information that can benefit broad sectors of our economy. Then 

too, federal investments in the underlying Earth observations technologies and systems have resulted in capabilities that have enabled a growing commercial remote sensing industry to emerge. 

So it makes sense to continuously look for new ways in which we 

can improve our ability to carry out Earth observations and maximize our Earth Science investments. 

Today, we will explore the extent to which NASA might be able 

to leverage potential public-private partnerships to carry out its 

Earth Science research and support the applied uses of that research. 

Truth be told, NASA has always had prior experience in purchasing commercial Earth observation data, and indeed, makes 

great use of the private sector. That was my personal experience, 

having started out at Goddard Space Flight Center working on 

Landsat but not working for NASA but working for one of its contractors, Lockheed. And so we’ve made great use of the private sector and its innovation and creativity over many years. This is nothing new. In fact, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, NASA initiated 

public-private partnerships for Earth science research including 

one for collecting ocean color data, called SeaWiFS. The results 

from those early projects demonstrated potential opportunities as 

well as challenges associated with such partnerships. 

The complexities associated with such arrangements were noted 

in a number of studies by the National Academies of Sciences. For 

example, at least one of those studies noted that the intersection 

of scientific and commercial interests in public-private partnerships 
18 

can pose significant challenges in attempting to meet the disparate 

requirements of stakeholders. This is because scientists value the 

free and open exchange of scientific data; the precise calibration, 

validation, and verification of satellite data to ensure accuracy; and 

long-term stewardship of data for future use and future research. 

However, that may not always be consistent with a company’s business goals and models. 

In addition, it’s clear that intellectual property issues related to 

licensing will need to be addressed, as well as issues related to 

data management, data continuity, and calibration if effective partnerships are to be sustained. 

So today, I am looking forward to hearing whether, in light of the 

potential new commercial capabilities in Earth observation, there 

are productive ways that commercial systems can complement 

NASA’s Earth observation data collection through the use of publicprivate partnerships, and if so, what mechanisms should NASA use 

to determine the circumstances under which public-private partnerships can effectively support the agency’s Earth science research 

and applications, and how should those partnerships be evaluated? 

How can Congress ensure that potential public-private partnerships do not inadvertently restrict and constrain research in an effort to generate revenue for the companies? And, are enacted policies and authorities that enabled the advent of commercial remote 

sensing adequate to address the future needs of both the federal 

government and the growing commercial remote sensing industry? 

Well, it’s clear that there are many issues that need to be addressed, and we certainly are not going to be able to do any more 

than begin our examination on this important topic today. This can 

be a productive area for future hearings of the Committee, and I 

hope we will continue oversight of this area. 

I would also note that the National Academies’ upcoming 

Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications is also likely to 

address a number of these same issues, and I look forward to hearing the results of that survey when it’s done. 

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that we have long had 

existing productive public-private partnerships in Earth observations, and so for the many contractors and suppliers who have built 

a formidable array of both civilian and national security Earth observations spacecraft and ground systems for NASA, NOAA, and 

other parts of the government, you are testimony to the long-standing commitment our government has had to making use of the 

skills and capabilities of the private sector, and they are many. I 

have every confidence that these type partnerships will continue to 

be productive both today in the years to come. 

And with that, I want to thank our witnesses today and I especially want to thank our two home witnesses, Dr. Samuel Goward, 

who’s the Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of 

Maryland at College Park, and Dr. Antonio Busalacchi, Professor 

and Director of the Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland as well, and I am proud to say, you’re 

great Marylanders and you come from great Maryland institutions, 

and welcome to today’s panel. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Edwards follows:] 
19 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

RANKING MEMBER DONNA F. EDWARDS

Good morning, and welcome to our distinguished panel of experts. 

I want to start by thanking the Chairmen Babin and Bridenstine for calling this 

hearing on ‘‘Exploring Commercial Opportunities to Maximize Earth Science Investments.’’ 

Earth observations support a myriad of applications to meet critical national 

needs, whether they be related to national security, weather forecasting, agricultural production, land use management, energy production, or protecting human 

health. Earth observations also support the scientific research and modeling that we 

hope can someday provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the Earth and 

its response to natural and human-induced changes. 

The collection of Earth observations data has been enabled by sustained Federal 

investments-investments that I hope we will continue to sustain even in the midst 

of budgetary constraints. 

Those investments have enabled the development of a robust ‘‘value- added’’ industry dedicated to turning Earth observations data into usable information that 

can benefit broad sectors of our economy. Then too, federal investments in the underlying Earth observations technologies and systems have resulted in capabilities 

that have enabled a growing commercial remote sensing industry to emerge. 

So it makes sense to continuously look for new ways in which we can improve 

our ability to carry out Earth observations and maximize our Earth Science investments.Today, we will explore the extent to which NASA might be able to leverage 

potential public-private partnerships to carry out its Earth Science research and 

support the applied uses of that research. 

Truth be told, NASA has had prior experience in purchasing commercial Earth 

observation data. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, NASA initiated public-private 

partnerships for Earth science research including one for collecting ocean color data, 

called SeaWiFS. The results from those early projects demonstrated potential opportunities as well as challenges associated with such partnerships. 

The complexities associated with such arrangements were noted in a number of 

studies by the National Academies of Sciences. For example, at least one of those 

studies noted that the intersection of scientific and commercial interests in publicprivate partnerships can pose significant challenges in attempting to meet the disparate requirements of stakeholders. 

This is because scientists value the free and open exchange of scientific data; the 

precise calibration, validation, and verification of satellite data to ensure accuracy; 

and long-term stewardship of data for future research. However, that may not always be consistent with companies’ business models. 

In addition, it is clear that intellectual property issues related to licensing will 

need to be addressed, as will issues related to data management, data continuity, 

and calibration if effective partnerships are to be sustained. 

So today, I am looking forward to hearing whether, in light of potential new commercial capabilities in Earth observation, there are productive ways that commercial systems can complement NASA’s Earth observation data collection through the 

use of public-private partnerships. 

And if so, what mechanisms should NASA use to determine the circumstances 

under which public-private partnerships can effectively support the agency’s Earth 

science research and applications, and how should those partnerships be evaluated? 

How can Congress ensure that potential public-private partnerships do not inadvertently restrict and constrain research in an effort to generate revenue for the 

companies?And, are enacted policies and authorities that enabled the advent of commercial remote sensing adequate to address the future needs of both the Federal 

government and the growing commercial remote sensing industry? 

Well, it is clear that there are many issues that need to be addressed, and we 

certainly are not going to be able to do any more than begin our examination of this 

important topic today. This can be a productive area for future hearings of the Committee, and I hope we will do continued oversight of this area. 

I would also note that the National Academies upcoming Decadal Survey for 

Earth Science and Applications is also likely to address a number of these same 

issues, and I look forward to hearing the results of the Survey when it is done. 

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that we have long had an existing productive public-private partnership in Earth observations. 

The many contractors and suppliers who have built a formidable array of both civilian and national security Earth observations spacecraft and ground systems for 

NASA, NOAA, and other parts of the government are testimony to the long-standing 
20 

commitment our government has had to making use of the skills and capabilities 

of the private sector. I have every confidence that that partnership will continue to 

be a productive one in the years to come. 

With that, I again want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look 

forward to your testimony. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. 

I now recognize the Chair of the Environment Subcommittee, the 

gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine, for an opening statement. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Well, thank you, Chairman Babin, and thank 

you for hosting this hearing today. I’m very excited about the panel 

that’s here. I’m very excited about the prospects before our country. 

In so many cases, what’s happening in space, it is outpacing— 

the commercial sector is outpacing what the government has been 

able to do, and that’s very exciting for us to figure out how do we 

take advantage of what commercial industry is doing. 

I sit on the Armed Services Committee as well. We’ve been dealing a lot with the space-based communication architecture. Commercial industry has been providing massive amounts of capacity 

for our war fighters all over the world, and of course, they’ve been 

doing it because we had a need and commercial industry was there 

to meet that need. They didn’t launch satellites because the government asked them to; they launched satellites to make a profit and 

provide a return for their shareholders. At the end of the day, the 

Department of Defense said we need that capability, and what’s 

happening now, because of commercial industry, we’re getting higher throughput and more capacity than we’ve ever seen before for 

our space-based communication architecture, a lot of it provided by 

commercial that we as a government can take advantage of. So 

that’s an important, I think, analogy to what we’re going to talk 

about today. 

I would also say that on the NOAA side, we have private companies that are preparing to launch satellites that can do things like 

GPS radio occultation and hyperspectral sensing, and of course, Dr. 

Pace, I read your testimony, and you talked about how these technologies, we’ve been considering commercializing these technologies 

for a very long time going back to the 1990s, which I did not know 

before reading your testimony, but now commercial industry is at 

a point where we as a government can take advantage of these 

technologies in ways where we haven’t before and improve our ability to predict and forecast weather, which of course is very important to my district. I come from the 1st District of Oklahoma. This 

year I’ve already lost one constituent to a tornado. I’ve lost constituents in previous years, and I will lose constituents again next 

year. So taking advantage of these capabilities that have been advanced by the private sector in many ways is critically important 

to us as a government. 

I read your testimony, Mr. Schingler, about some of the ways 

that NASA is already partnering with the private sector. You 

talked about settlements as a service, and you talked about venture-class launch services through the Launch Services program, 

ways that we can get things into space more effectively and more 

cost-effective so that we can take advantage of the great things 

that are happening in commercial industry today. 
21 

And of course, remote sensing, when you talk about the National 

Geospatial Intelligence Agency, they’re taking advantage of the capabilities of the people that are sitting on this panel right now, and 

they’re doing it because they know that the direction you are going, 

you’re going much more rapidly than they can go themselves, and 

to understand that, the idea that we can get higher-resolution imagery that can provided mensurated coordinates, the idea that we 

can have more rapid revisit times, and even motion pictures, these 

are capabilities now that the commercial sector is providing that 

we as a government absolutely must figure out how to take advantage of. Your capabilities are impressive. We need to learn what 

you’re able to do. We need to figure out as a country as we go forward, you know, there is a lot of talk about what is a global public 

good, what is a public good. There’s a lot of talk about if it is a public good, how do you as a private company protect your proprietary 

data that you rely on to actually provide a return on investment. 

These are challenging issues that this panel and other panels are 

going to have to work through. 

I want to be really clear. When it comes to the Earth Sciences 

Division at NASA, the Science Mission directorate, this is an agency that has been very effective in doing important work on behalf 

of my constituents. They are teaching us more about the Earth so 

that we can protect our constituents from weather, and of course, 

the things that they have done have done just that. 

So Chairman Babin, thank you for having this hearing, and to 

our panelists, thank you for being here. I’m very much looking forward to this testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bridenstine follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT

CHAIRMAN JIM BRIDENSTINE

Chairman Bridenstine: Good morning. I thank the gentleman from Texas, Dr. 

Babin, for holding this hearing. Today we are discussing an issue that has been the 

subject of a number of hearings before the Environment Subcommittee this year: 

utilizing commercial solutions to satisfy government missions. 

My subcommittee has examined how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, could apply commercial space-based data to improve weather 

forecasting. In similar fashion, today we will explore commercial opportunities to 

provide NASA with critical earth science data. 

As one of NASA’s Science Mission Directorates, contributions from Earth Sciences 

have enhanced our understanding of the Earth. As one example, NASA Earth 

Science missions have improved our weather forecasts. I represent the State of 

Oklahoma - I know all too well the dangers posed by severe weather events, and 

the need to improve our capabilities of predicting storms to protect lives and property. 

At NOAA, the opportunity exists for the Agency to partner with the growing commercial weather industry. Such partnerships could greatly reduce the cost of operating large monolithic satellite systems, resulting in lower government spending, 

greater resiliency, and increased quality of forecasts. 

The Environment Subcommittee has heard from a number of private sector companies that have or will soon have the capabilities to provide data to NOAA, and 

want to partner with the Agency. In an encouraging sign, NOAA has begun to take 

notice of the emerging industry and has started taking the first steps to incorporating private space-based technologies. 

In September of this year, NOAA released a draft commercial space policy, designed to assist the acquisition of future commercial technologies. I look forward to 

NOAA releasing a final version that incorporates stakeholder concerns and feedback 

with the draft version. In encourage NOAA to make releasing the final Commercial 

Space Policy a top priority, along with releasing the necessary next steps such as 
22 

NESDIS’ accompanying procurement process guide. These documents are essential 

to forming the basis for how the private sector will interact with NOAA going forward. 

I am pleased to see this Committee taking the first steps to look at how NASA 

can follow a similar trajectory. It is my firm belief the government ought not do 

what the private sector can. Our ability to utilize commercial options will minimize 

government spending and aid mission directives. I am optimistic that a market will 

materialize for many different space-based technologies, as we have seen time and 

time again with the Department of Defense’s requirements and are beginning to see 

with NOAA’s needs. NASA ought to recognize this pattern and take a good hard 

look at utilizing these opportunities. 

To do this, NASA should take a proactive step to re-establish its commercial earth 

observation data buy program that has laid dormant for years, establish clear policy 

supporting and directing the acquisition of commercial data, establish the appropriate protocols to support commercial options, and begin meaningful dialogue with 

the private sector to assess the usefulness of public-private partnerships to meet its 

Earth observation data requirements. 

With NOAA, we’ve seen commercial space-based data companies waiting for the 

Agency to have a finalized framework in place so they can enter into agreements, 

raise capital, and launch satellites. However, in the case of NASA, there isn’t a commercial earth observation data policy in place yet. 

I hope this hearing can be used to identify and determine the necessary first steps 

in that process. 

I thank the witnesses for being here today, and look forward to your testimonies. 

Thank you and I yield 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Chairman Bridenstine. I appreciate 

that. 

I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on 

Environment, the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, for an 

opening statement. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you to all of our witnesses for being here today. 

Chairman Bridenstine and I have held a number of thoughtful 

and engaging hearings examining how NOAA can advance the role 

of the commercial sector in providing critical weather data to our 

National Weather Enterprise. We’ve discussed potential challenges 

and opportunities with numerous representatives of the weather 

community, and with Vice Admiral Manson Brown, the Assistant 

Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction. 

The message has been consistent: there are great opportunities 

to engage the commercial sector in ways to supplant NOAA’s observational mission—supplement NOAA’s observational mission, but 

we must maintain the core policies, namely free and open access 

to data, that have allowed our scientific community and the American weather industry to drive innovation and economic growth. 

Our critical weather data must remain reliable and of the highest 

quality to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions around the 

world. 

In September, NOAA released its draft Commercial Space Policy, 

which outlines the policies and guidelines for how the agency will 

engage with the commercial sector. Most importantly, NOAA reaffirms its commitment to adhere to the policy and practice of full, 

open, and free data exchange as established by current laws and 

policies to maintain a system of reciprocity for global data. A system of reciprocity that means NOAA receives three times the 

amount of data it contributes—improving forecasts and reducing 

costs. 
23 

I am pleased that NOAA appears to be on the right path to improve engagement with its commercial partners, and I’m looking 

forward to reviewing the final policy, which I understand will be 

released in the coming weeks. NOAA has an operational mission, 

and their data and information are considered public goods. 

NASA serves a research mission with different challenges and 

opportunities to engage the commercial sector, and as we’ve discussed today, there have been partnerships going on for quite a 

long time. So although there may be an opportunity for NASA to 

adapt some of NOAA’s commercial policies, there are certainly important distinctions that require careful consideration. 

A common challenge both agencies face is ensuring that data 

purchased from commercial sources can be shared without significant restrictions. For the most part, the unrestricted access to 

weather data has been the foundation of the current billion-dollar 

commercial weather industry, an industry that is the best in the 

world. It’s very likely that data purchased by NASA can be shared 

in a way to further stimulate future commercial ventures. 

At the same time, a gap in data continuity in NASA’s Earth observations could have serious and detrimental effects on our research enterprise and our understanding of the climate. Both 

NOAA and NASA are well aware that existing partnerships with 

private companies carry risks, such as delays in production, launch 

failures, and cost overruns. For NOAA, any commercial policy that 

provides critical observational data for weather predictions must 

consider these factors, as well as the risk to the lives of millions 

of people across the country. NASA faces similar challenges when 

developing its path forward to engage its commercial partners, if 

not on the same scale. 

Mr. Chairman, again I am pleased that we are having this hearing, not only to recognize the positive direction NOAA is taking to 

engage commercial parties, but to identify common ground for 

NASA to adopt into its own commercial policies, and I look forward 

to hearing from our witnesses, and I know they have years of expertise among them. We’re fortunate to have them here. 

And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

MINORITY RANKING MEMBER SUZANNE BONAMICI

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. 

Chairman Bridenstine and I have held a number of thoughtful and engaging hearings examining how NOAA can advance the role of the commercial sector in providing critical weather data to our national weather enterprise. We have discussed 

potential challenges and opportunities with numerous representatives of the weather community, and with Vice Admiral Manson Brown, the Assistant Secretary of 

Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction. 

The message has been consistent: there are great opportunities to engage the commercial sector in ways to supplement NOAA’s observational mission, but we must 

maintain the core policies, namely free and open access to data, that have allowed 

our scientific community and the American weather industry to drive innovation 

and economic growth. Our critical weather data must remain reliable, and of the 

highest quality to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions around the world. 

In September, NOAA released its Draft Commercial Space Policy, which outlines 

the policies and guidelines for how the Agency will engage the commercial sector. 
24 

Most importantly, NOAA reaffirms its commitment to adhere to the policy and practice of full, open, and free data exchange as established by current laws and policies 

to maintain a ‘‘system of reciprocity for global data.’’ A system of reciprocity that 

means NOAA receives three times the amount of data it contributes—improving 

forecasts and reducing costs. 

I am pleased that NOAA appears to be on the right path to improve engagement 

with its commercial partners, and I’m looking forward to reviewing the final policy, 

which I understand will be released in the coming weeks. 

NOAA has an operational mission, and their data and information are considered 

public goods. NASA serves a research mission with different challenges and opportunities to engage the commercial sector. So although there may be an opportunity 

for NASA to adopt some of NOAA’s commercial policies, there are important distinctions that require careful consideration. 

A common challenge both agencies face is ensuring that data purchased from commercial sources can be shared without significant restrictions. For the most part, 

the unrestricted access to weather data has been the foundation of the current billion dollar commercial weather industry, an industry that is the best in the world. 

It is very likely that data purchased by NASA can be shared in a way to further 

stimulate future commercial ventures. At the same time, a gap in data continuity 

in NASA’s Earth observations could have serious and detrimental effects on our research enterprise and our understanding of the climate. 

Both NOAA and NASA are well aware that existing partnerships with private 

companies carry risks, such as delays in production, launch failures, and cost overruns. For NOAA, any commercial policy that provides critical observational data for 

weather predictions must consider these factors, as well as the risk to the lives of 

millions of people across the country.NASA faces similar challenges when developing its path forward to engage its commercial partners, if not on the same scale. 

Mr. Chairman, again I am pleased that we are having this hearing, not only to 

recognize the positive direction NOAA is taking to engage commercial parties, but 

also to identify common ground for NASA to adopt into its own commercial policies. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield back the balance of my 

time. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

I’d like to now recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee for a statement, the gentlelady from Texas. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Good morning, and welcome to our distinguished panel of witnesses. I am pleased that we have an opportunity to discuss 

NASA’s Earth Science and Applications program. 

As I have said on numerous occasions, NASA is a critical engine 

of discovery, science, innovation, and inspiration. Earth Science 

and applications research is a key agency responsibility. 

A 2005 study by the National Academies stated that ‘‘Decades of 

investments in research and the present Earth observing system 

have also improved health, enhanced national security, and 

spurred economic growth by supplying the business community 

with critical information.’’ NASA’s Earth Science and Applications 

program provides a broad array of benefits and applications across 

the public and private sectors. For example, after the Deepwater 

Horizon spill in 2010, NASA’s project allowed response teams to 

track the movement of the oil into the coastal waterways, and this 

was critical in assisting in monitoring the impact and recovery of 

affected areas along the Gulf of Mexico. 

Our investment in Earth observations has also spawned successful international cooperation. The Global Precipitation Measurement, or the GPM mission, a cooperative effort by NASA and the 

Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is advancing our understanding of Earth’s water and energy cycles, improving the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extending current capabilities of using satellite precipitation information 
25 

to directly benefit society. Maintaining and enhancing our Earth 

Science capabilities and investments in the years to come will require that we continuously look for new sources, be they international or from the private sector. Indeed, with growing numbers 

of American companies launching and operating space-based remote sensing small satellites, this may be an opportune time to assess the private sector’s ability to complement NASA’s Earth observation systems. 

I hope our distinguished panel will provide us with an objective 

assessment of both the opportunities and challenges associated 

with leveraging commercial offerings. 

With that, again I want to thank our witnesses for being here 

today, and I look forward to your testimony. I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson of Texas follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FULL COMMITTEE

RANKING MEMBER EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON

Good morning, and welcome to our distinguished panel of experts. I am pleased 

that we have an opportunity to discuss NASA’s Earth Science and Applications Program. 

As I have said on numerous occasions, NASA is a critical engine of discovery, 

science, innovation and inspiration. Earth Science and applications research is a key 

agency responsibility. 

A 2005 study by the National Academies stated that ‘‘Decades of investments in 

research and the present Earth observing system have also improved health, enhanced national security, and spurred economic growth by supplying the business 

community with critical information.’’ 

NASA’s Earth Science and Applications Program provides a broad array of benefits and applications across the public and private sectors. For example, after the 

Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, a NASA project allowed response teams to track 

the movement of the oil into coastal waterways. This was critical in assisting in 

monitoring the impact and recovery of affected areas along the Gulf of Mexico. 

Our investment in Earth observations has also spawned successful international 

cooperation. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, a cooperative effort by NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is advancing our understanding of Earth’s water and energy cycles, improving the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extending current capabilities of 

using satellite precipitation information to directly benefit society. 

Maintaining and enhancing our Earth Science capabilities and investments in the 

years to come will require that we continuously look for new sources, be they international or from the private sector. Indeed, with the growing number of American 

companies launching and operating space-based remote sensing small satellites, this 

may be an opportune time to assess the private sector’s ability to complement 

NASA’s Earth observation systems. 

I hope our distinguished panel will provide us with an objective assessment of 

both the opportunities and challenges associated with leveraging commercial offerings. 

With that, I again want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look 

forward to your testimony. With that, I yield back. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. 

Now, let me introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today— 

I want to thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. The 

first witness today is Dr. Pace. Testifying first is Dr. Scott Pace, 

Director of the Space Policy Institute, and Professor of the Practice 

of International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. 

Pace previously served as Associate Administrator for Program 

Analysis and Evaluation at NASA, as Assistant Director to Space 

and Aeronautics in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the 
26 

Office of Space Commerce and the Office of the Deputy Secretary 

of the Department of Commerce. Dr. Pace earned his bachelor of 

science degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, master’s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, and technology and policy 

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in 

policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School. 

And Dr. Scott. Our second witness today is Dr. Walter Scott—Sir 

Walter Scott, we said a while ago—Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for DigitalGlobe, the first company to receive a high-resolution commercial remote sensing license from the U.S. government. Dr. Scott has previous experience 

serving as the Assistant Associate Director of the Physics Department for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is 

President of Scott Consulting. Dr. Scott earned a bachelor of arts 

in applied mathematics from Harvard University and a doctorate 

and master of science and computer science from the University of 

California at Berkeley. 

Mr. Robbie Schingler is a Co-Founder and the President of 

PlanetLabs. Mr. Schingler has nine years of NASA experience 

under his belt helping to build a small spacecraft office at NASA 

Ames and serving as Capture Manager for the Transiting 

Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or T–E–S–S, TESS, that will launch in 

2017. Robbie has also served as NASA’s Open Government Representative to the White House and is Chief of Staff for the Office 

of the Chief Technologist at NASA. And Mr. Schingler has received 

his master of business administration from Georgetown University, 

his master of science in space studies from the International Space 

University, and his bachelor of science in engineering physics from 

Santa Clara University. Good to have you. 

Testifying fourth is Dr. Samuel Goward, Professor Emeritus at 

the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of 

Maryland, College Park. Dr. Goward has a long history working 

with remote sensing beginning his career with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He then worked at NASA Goddard Space 

Flight Center where he helped build the University of Maryland 

geography department. Dr. Goward has served as Co-Chair of the 

USGS National Landsat Archive Advisory Committee and is the recipient of the USGS Powell Award, the highest USGS award bestowed upon non-agency individuals. Dr. Goward earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography from Boston University 

and his Ph.D. in geography from Indiana State University. Thank 

you for being here. 

And Dr. Busalacchi. Our final witness today is Dr. Antonio 

Busalacchi, Director of the Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary 

Center and Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland. Dr. Busalacchi previously served as Chief of the NASA Goddard Laboratory for 

Hydrospheric Processes. Dr. Busalacchi also has experience as 

Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee that oversaw the World Climate Research program, and as the Chair of several National 

Academy of Science and National Research Council Boards and 

Committees relating to remote sensing. Dr. Busalacchi currently 

serves as Co-Chair of the National Research Council’s Decadal Survey on Earth Science and Applications from Space. Dr. Busalacchi 
27 

earned his bachelor’s in physics, his master’s in oceanography, and 

his Ph.D. in oceanography from Florida State University. 

I now recognize Dr. Pace for five minutes to present his testimony. Dr. Pace, thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. SCOTT PACE, 

DIRECTOR OF THE SPACE POLICY INSTITUTE, 

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

Dr. PACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity, particularly in a joint fashion, to discuss the important 

topic of how commercial capabilities could be used to the benefit of 

the Nation’s Earth science investments. 

I had the privilege of working on Title II of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Act with Barry Beringer, the former Chief Counsel 

of the House Committee on Science. In the aftermath of the Cold 

War, at that time Title II reformed the U.S. commercial remote 

sensing license process, and removed many commercial regulatory 

barriers. This reform was successful beyond our somewhat modest 

expectations, leading to a more dynamic and information-driven 

global industry. 

The idea, as has been noted, of buying data from commercial 

sources for NASA, is indeed not new. In 1998, I testified to the 

House Subcommittee on Basic Research on using commercial data 

sources in NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise. At the time, I discussed the need for NASA to consider the needs of other civil agencies in buying commercial data for Earth science needs. The idea 

was that NASA’s capabilities and buying power could be leveraged 

to support other public missions. New applications of remote sensing data could be demonstrated to accelerate the growth of commercial applications. 

Looking back from now, the National Geospatial Intelligence 

Agency, rather than NASA, became the dominant government purchaser of the U.S. commercial remote sensing data. Information 

technologies also advanced rapidly so that more computer and 

sensing power could be packed into smaller packages, and our concerns over access to adequate radiofrequency spectrum for remote 

sensing also turned out to be somewhat correct. There is in fact increasing pressure on spectrum not so much for remote sensing 

bandwidth but from competing demands from mobile terrestrial 

communications. 

Rather than a few conventional satellites connected to centralized data management systems, we are seeing dozens of small satellites connecting to highly distributed networks in which even an 

iPad might be a ground station. And among other changes, sometimes the data files are becoming so massive that moving them to 

the user becomes less efficient than creating large data cubes that 

users can query remotely it’s truly remarkable how much data’s 

being put together. 

Today, NASA’s Earth Science Division researchers can propose to 

purchase commercial data using contractor grant funds when the 

purchased information is required by or would substantially enhance the research activity. Now, of course, if similar data or information were available in the public domain, there would no point 

in making that purchase, and some commercial data may already 
28 

be available under all government licenses such as those held by 

NGA, so there are some potential public-private partnership activities already going on. 

It’s also not news to those here today that budget allocations 

have been flat or declining in real-dollar terms for NASA and 

NOAA. If NASA were to have the same buying power that it had 

in fiscal year 1992 when we did the Land Remote Sensing Act, it 

would have a budget of about $24 billion. At the same time, NASA 

is now being asked to support more Earth science activities than 

just those of the Decadal Survey. The success of past NASA missions has created ongoing demands for operational yet exquisite 

scientific data, and this makes it difficult for NASA to fund new 

starts for Decadal Survey priorities. 

For both agencies and companies, it’s common to find that each 

wants to only pay, as we would say, the marginal cost of having 

a capability rather than the average cost of having a capability. If 

the dominant market demand is for a public good, then not unreasonably the burden rightly would fall on the government. If the 

dominant market demand is from private customers, then the burden should be borne by the private sector. 

In many cases of civil remote sensing, however, like Landsat, 

there’s a roughly even balance of public and private sector demand, 

which makes a clear partnership and definitions much more difficult, not easier. 

Major elements, I would argue, of NASA’s Earth Science program 

are likely to remain government-led due to the lack of commercial 

demand for specialized scientific data, that is, customers outside of 

the government. Commercial providers will likely not soon replace 

unique platforms such as those on the A train. On the other hand, 

where NASA needs can be met by commercial data sources, cooperation with other agencies such as NGA can increase the government’s buying power, and as has been noted, NASA does have 

the authorities to do this more extensively. 

In acquiring commercial data, NASA should ensure that it gets 

sufficient rights so that data sets can be shared for scientific noncommercial purposes. It should ensure that as sufficient insight 

into how the data was generated such as peer review can independently assess conclusions based on those data, and I think some of 

the other witnesses will likely note that there are a variety of 

rights that can be bought, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. 

There should be procurement on-ramps to enable experimentation and large-scale innovation in parallel with current government systems and international partnerships. We can talk about 

some of those, for example, for Landsat. In the long term, it will 

be more risky to pursue only traditional acquisitions without a 

mixed portfolio that includes non-traditional and commercial procurements. 

Finally, NASA should continue to be a strong domestic and international advocate of preventing interference with radio spectrum 

upon which all remote sensing relies. Spectrum protection is and 

will continue to be challenging due to commercial terrestrial communication demands for more spectrum in the years ahead. 

Thank you for your attention and I look forward to any questions. 
29 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Pace follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Dr. Pace. I appreciate it. 

I now recognize Dr. Scott for five minutes to present his testimony. Dr. Scott, thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. WALTER SCOTT, 

FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER, 

DIGITALGLOBE 

Dr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I’d like to acknowledge that 23 years ago, with its support for the 

1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, this Committee set in place 

the framework that enabled commercial space observation of the 

Earth to be born and to set the stage for what’s turned out to be 

a very successful public-private partnership. 

Over 23 years ago, when I started DigitalGlobe, the Cold War 

had ended, and the global transparency that had been provided by 

satellite reconnaissance had contributed to keeping the Cold War 

cold because it allowed nations to act on the basis of facts, not on 

the basis of fears. Along the way, the Landsat program introduced 

the world to satellite imagery in 1972, and this led me to wonder, 

couldn’t those benefits be more widespread? Imagine if there were 

fewer instances of hunger, thirst, strife, sickness around the world. 

Wouldn’t that lead to increased global stability and a greater quality of life for mankind? 

So now roll the clock forward. The satellite—high-resolution satellite imagery industry was successfully commercialized and 

brought to market in 2000 supporting customers that include a 

wide range—energy, financial services, U.S. allies, U.S. government, online mapping. If you’ve looked at satellite imagery on your 

mobile devices, it’s probably DigitalGlobe’s. And in many ways, satellite imagery—the satellite imagery industry represents an ideal 

model for public-private partnerships. 

In our case specifically, we’ve been a trusted partner of the U.S. 

government for more than a decade, most recently with NGA’s Enhanced View SLA, which is a ten-year firm fixed-price contract 

where the government pays for the products and services that it receives but not for the infrastructure, the overhead, the workforce, 

or any of the associated costs of a traditional government acquisition. And today we provide NGA with over 90 percent of their 

foundational Earth imagery requirements. They get first priority 

tasking to our high-resolution unclassified imagery, and it can be 

shared broadly to support operational mission planning, disaster 

response, recovery, and situational awareness. 

So what are some of the key lessons learned from that public-private partnership? The first one is to balance the needs of the U.S. 

government with a commercial partner. We make our money by 

collecting imagery and then licensing it multiple times to different 

customers for use in different ways. As such, if a customer is allowed to widely and freely disseminate the totality of our products, 

it undermines our ability to deliver commercial value, and so there 

are models in which we could make all of a certain type of imagery 

available for broad sharing as Landsat is today but at a higher cost 

to the government to offset the loss of the commercial opportunity, 

and the government would need to make that tradeoff. 
42 

The second key point is, it’s critical to have a predictable regulatory regime that’s designed to foster innovation. This is extremely 

important to us, and I’d like to thank the recent support by this 

Committee on the SPACE Act that was passed last night, specifically Chairman Bridenstine and Congressman Perlmutter—thank 

you very much—who championed the remote sensing language that 

I believe is a needed first step to regulatory reform. If you think 

about it, the current regulations in our industry were written at a 

time when very few players outside the government were capable 

of remote sensing, and the world is obviously very different now 

where there are billions of people who use the internet to access 

satellite imagery, and there are hundreds of remote sensing satellites being launched by dozens of nations. 

The United States played a critical role as an international leader in the space industry, and to maintain and extend our leadership, we need a regulatory framework that encourages that leadership and staying well ahead of and not simply achieving parity 

with foreign competition. 

So in closing, I want to thank you for the opportunity to describe 

our unique public-private partnership with NGA. It’s been our 

honor to work with NGA, which is unwavering in its efforts to secure our Nation, and we share a commitment to that service and 

it’s why so many of our employees have chosen to spend their careers at DigitalGlobe. There’s no higher honor than serving those 

who serve our country, and that’s how we live up to our purpose 

of seeing a better world. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Scott follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Scott. 

I now recognize Mr. Schingler for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. ROBBIE SCHINGLER, 

CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, PLANETLABS 

Mr. SCHINGLER. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you very much 

to the Committee for inviting us here today and having this important conversation. 

I would like to offer you my thoughts on how a changing landscape—and how the landscape is changing in commercial space activities. This suggests that NASA and other government agencies 

should rethink the nature of their relationship with the private sector. 

The concept of public-private partnerships needs to expand to be 

inclusive of the full portfolio of activities where government and 

private sector efforts overlap and intermingle. A core objective of 

his suite of activities should be to encourage U.S. entrepreneurial 

ingenuity at this certainly is going to be a strong source of U.S. 

leadership in space in the 21st century. 

I will speak specifically to opportunities in the realm of Earth observation to illustrate this larger concept, but this same framework 

is applicable to other challenges and opportunities that we face in 

space today. 

Over the past several decades, in parallel to the pioneering work 

being done at NASA, a new world of sensor technology was emerging driven by the massive improvement in technologies from the 

commercial sector including consumer electronics, industries, biotechnology industries and the internet. What this means is the capacity is to have highly capable, sensitive, long-lived, low-cost components fielded in technology platforms in any location. We see this 

in our pockets. We see this in drones. We see this in our homes, 

in our cars. It’s a global sensor revolution that’s giving us near 

real-time data about the world around us. 

So my cofounders and I, inspired to think big at NASA, wanted 

to bring the sensor revolution to space. So we formed PlanetLabs. 

Our first goal was to leverage the utility of having a distributed 

sensor network in space, and that is to image the world Earth 

every day, and we call that mission one, and the purpose of doing 

that is to make global change visible, accessible, and actionable. 

To accomplish our goal of whole Earth everyday imaging, we’re 

placing more than 100 satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit. 

Today we’ve launched a total of 101 test satellites over the last 2– 

1/2 years, and we are currently operating nearly four dozen spacecraft in two different orbits. Today we operate the world’s largest 

Earth observation constellation, and given our pace of development 

and learning and our planned launch manifests over the next 12 

months, we anticipate having the global daily monitoring capability 

from space operating this time next year. 

PlanetLabs is one of several companies leading a new revolution 

in Earth imaging. Companies with a similar perspective on innovating quickly with new technology, pursuing a meaningful mission, and disrupting markets and industry sectors, companies that 

are privately funded looking for commercial market return first be-
51 

fore approaching the government. These companies are bringing 

higher-resolution imaging, higher revisit Earth imaging, video from 

space, commercial weather data, and other capabilities to reality. 

Much of these technologies’ industrial capability that is being developed lend itself to other missions in space, especially in areas 

where disaggregation and distributed sensory networks can be best 

utilized. 

I am compelled to note that at Planet Labs, we consider ourselves to be in partnership with the civil government Earth observation community every day. For example, we use Landsat 8 data 

for many critical purposes. We use MODIS data, cloud data from 

NOAA systems. NASA and NOAA provide a critical foundation for 

our activities, and without their publically available data, we would 

be significantly challenged to accomplish our goals. Moreover, the 

longitudinal history and reliability of these systems are key for industry to prosper and for scientists to discover greater understanding or our planet. 

Since the beginning of the space era in the middle of the previous 

century, space activities have had two extremely strong pillars: the 

national security space domain and the civil space domain led by 

NASA. The private sector has evolved to a point where it’s certainly a third pillar into itself. Therefore, it is time to rethink a 

new structure for government contractor relationship with industry. A new industry-government relationship considers several factors holistically. These factors include government programs that 

foster innovation by creating white space for new concepts, creativity, and exploration that could led to new capabilities, products 

and services by the outcome, not the process, government programs 

that utilize kinds of agile aerospace methods practiced at planet 

and elsewhere to more rapidly advance their internal technology 

projects and train their professionals for multiple methods of program management, government agencies who can act as consumers 

in the market, able to recognize that they are one of many customers in a marketplace of new data and services, data buys for 

research and development and validation, and become a solid second commercial customer of a commercial product, and finally, a 

regulatory environment that is responsive and supportive to the innovations that come from the private sector, a good regulatory environment that has insight, oversight and foresight to foster commercial innovation. 

Thank you very much. I have much more detail in the long-form 

testimony, and I look forward to answering your questions today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schingler follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Schingler. 

I now recognize Dr. Goward for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. SAMUEL GOWARD, 

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY, 

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AT COLLEGE PARK 

Dr. GOWARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I guess that I’m here representing the past and what we have 

or have not learned from it. So I think it’s important to revisit 

Landsat, who I variously referred to as the albatross, as in the Lost 

Mariner, or the Rodney Dangerfield of land remote sensing, because it has suffered many, many tragedies over the years. The 

first started when the mission was first described and developed by 

an NRC panel in 1967 out at Woods Hole where the discussion of 

Earth observations led to the decision that land remote sensing 

would be most likely to commercialize. Unfortunately, that developed from a tradition of aerial photography, which preceded by a 

century this discussion of Landsat, and actually missed the point 

of the innovators and visionaries who first conceived of the Landsat 

mission, which was to be a global monitoring system, not a picture 

acquisition system, and in fact, that’s been missed many times but 

actually the first Landsat mission was designed to have two satellites to demonstrate how you would develop an operational constellation to monitor Planet Earth as my colleague was just describing. Now, that was back in the 1970s when these designs were 

being developed, but it’s never been captured as a part of the 

Landsat mission, and in fact, we’ve degraded since then, at least 

from my point of view. 

It’s important to recognize that because of the sense that 

Landsat was most likely to be commercialized as a substitute for 

aerial photography, it has suffered at least two examples of commercialization which have failed, the first of which was in the 

1980s when the executive and Congress moved Landsat to NOAA 

and then commercialized the system with EOSAT. That was an experience that all of us involved in the science community still live 

in fear of today, and in fact, it’s one of the reasons when you find 

scientists hesitating when we talk about private-public partnerships that the experience with EOSAT is clear still in everybody’s 

minds. 

Now, there are many lessons learned that I’m not going to go 

over today about what happened in that case, and we should never 

forget those lessons learned as we look to the future because, honestly, on the other side, I had been involved in the science data by 

convening a science panel to select the vendors that were chosen 

to provide products to NASA for Earth observations in the late 

1990s, and we actually had a remarkable series of successes including the space imaging IKONOS data and we would have used 

DigitalGlobe and did very late in the process but there were launch 

issues that occurred prior to that. 
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So the second time that Landsat suffered a data buy issue is in 

the acquisition of Landsat 8, and under that process, the first process that was pursued was a data buy in which both Resource 21 

and DigitalGlobe were involved. DigitalGlobe decided, probably for 

clear reasons, that they were getting out of that game before the 

bidding was selected, and Resource 21 was not selected because 

there was simply not cost savings involved to the government with 

the bid that they provided. But that’s the second commercial effort 

for the Landsat mission, and I can tell you both of those efforts 

have put us behind in a science development of the value of this 

mission to observe the Earth as a result of those activities. So 

when you talk to the science community, you’re going to get a very 

funny reaction about private-public partnerships, which is not necessary a bad thing but you have to understand this history colors 

the view of the science community in the use of this approach to 

data acquisition. 

However, it’s important to also recognize that when Landsat 

came back to the government in the 1990s, that data buy became 

no longer an issue but the value of the data for science activity became very clear, and again, I won’t go through the detail. I’m out 

of my time, so I’ll stop here. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Goward follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Goward. 

And now I would like to recognize Dr. Busalacchi for your testimony as well for five minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. ANTONIO BUSALACCHI, 

PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE EARTH 

SYSTEM SCIENCE INTERDISCIPLINARY CENTER, 

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. Good morning, Chairman Babin, Chairman 

Bridenstine, Ranking Members Edwards and Bonamici, and members of the Subcommittee. 

Prior to my coming to the University of Maryland 15 years ago, 

I was a civil servant for 18 years at the NASA Goddard Space 

Flight Center. While I was a lab chief at Goddard, I served as a 

source selection official for the SeaWiFS Ocean Color Data Buy 

from Orbital Sciences Corporation that is directly relevant to this 

hearing. 

Presently, I also serve as the Co-Chair of the Decadal Survey for 

Earth Sciences and Applications from Space being carried out by 

the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The 

report from this study will provide the sponsors—NASA, NOAA 

and the USGS—with consensus recommendations from the environmental monitoring and Earth science and application communities for an integrated and sustainable approach to the conduct of 

the U.S. government’s civilian space-based Earth system science 

programs. 

Before continuing with my testimony, I should note, though, that 

I’m speaking in my own behalf today. Nothing in my testimony 

should be construed as indicating anything about what the Decadal 

Survey Committee may recommend when a report is published in 

the summer of 2017. 

If there’s one take-home message from my testimony this morning, it is the need to establish a series of best practices to guide 

future public-private partnerships for Earth remote sensing, drawing on the lessons learned from the past. So in this regard, and 

based on my own experience, the following are characteristics of a 

successful partnership between NASA and a private entity. 

Firstly, the need to establish an appropriate insight/oversight 

model with a commercial partner. What worked well for the 

SeaWiFS Science data buy was one where NASA maintained insight, but not oversight, of the project. Next, to ensure the highest 

quality of the scientific data, NASA needs to have access to the algorithms and instrument characterization, access to, and ability to 

re-use the data, and establishment of an appropriate data archive. 

Turning data into information of value to both the commercial entity and to the science community now and in the future requires detailed knowledge of how the raw data are generated, the algorithms that are used to process the data and generate higher level 

data products, often combined with data from other sensors and 

platforms, and control how the data are archived. 

Another important aspect is the need for science teams as part 

of a plan to maximize the utility of the data. The establishment of 

a science team early in the development of a NASA Earth observation mission is a familiar and well-grounded recommendation. Once 
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established, early science efforts, via development of a prototype 

system, or synthetic data sets, can contribute directly to engineering and system analyses. It can also optimize algorithms through 

competition. Such teams provide a conduit to the user community, 

and also provide timely engagement of the research community, 

which would rapidly expand the user base. 

With respect to a successful public-private partnership, technical 

readiness is an important measure of what observation methodology may be ripe for transition. In the case of Earth imaging, as 

we’ve heard this morning, there’s over six decades’ worth of heritage on the design of such sensors. This has provided the opportunity for significant core competencies to developed, as we’ve 

heard, in the private sector, thus enabling public-private partnerships. Those technologies that are mature are likely the ones that 

may be most amenable to a public-private partnership. Conversely, 

the more novel the technology, or newer the data stream or observation, the greater the requirement for government involvement in 

order to draw on a wider base of expertise for sensor characterization, calibration, validation, science data processing, and re-processing. 

Lastly, while obvious, it must be stated that the commercial demand and market for the data is key to cost savings to the government. If the government is the sole user of the data, there’s little 

incentive for a public-private partnership. In the example of 

SeaWiFS, the cost to the government was reduced by Orbital 

Science’s intent to sell the real time data to the commercial fishing 

industry. Transition across basic research, to applied research, to 

development of products and applications is not fast, and it’s not 

easy. However, the extent to which this can be accelerated in support of a range of societal benefit areas, be they agriculture, transportation, fishing, land use, et cetera, will determine the non-governmental demand for the data, and potential cost savings to the 

government. 

In closing, public-private partnerships offer an alternative and 

potentially less costly method to acquire Earth observations. However, with SeaWiFS as a guide, a successful public-private partnership may be realized only in limited circumstances, and only with 

the careful attention to the particular needs of both profit making 

entities and the science community. Thank you for your attention. 

I look forward to the questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Busalacchi follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Busalacchi. I thank all of the 

witnesses for your testimony, and the Chair recognizes himself for 

five minutes. 

Dr. Scott Pace, traditionally NASA’s Earth Science Division focused on one-off research satellites to demonstrate technology in 

science. Recently, however, NASA was given responsibility for the 

Sustainable Land Imagining Program, and a number of NOAA’s 

long term satellite observational requirements, including TSIS–1, 

the Ozone Mapping and Profile Suite, OMPS, and the JPSS–2 radiation budget instrument, and future ocean altimetry missions. 

How, if at all, do these new responsibilities represent a unique— 

represent unique opportunities for public-private partnerships? 

Dr. PACE. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Each one of these 

missions is somewhat different, and, as my colleague was saying 

earlier, need to pay attention to the particulars of each case, in 

particular finding, you know, non-government or non-NASA agencies who want the data. In the case of Landsat, at the risk of continuing the Rodney Dangerfield analogy, I think that the technical 

risks in providing that data tend to be the most well-bounded, and 

there are multiple non-NASA users. And that, given the right incentives, commercial entities could fund development tests and operation of those systems. 

However, that option, I think, has been largely precluded by the 

intent of Congress, that NASA would develop the next Landsat satellite pretty much as a repeat of earlier satellites. And I would simply look at the NASA Appropriations Conference report for fiscal 

year 2015, which really precludes any sort of out of the box approaches to data collection. That’s why I talked about the need for 

some sort of on ramp, or parallel activity, maybe revising the 

science data buy, or maybe looking at some more partnerships with 

NGA in each of these areas, and to not pre-judge what the outcome 

would be, but maybe have a competition through NGA, or through 

the SDB, and see what you get. I would suspect that the Landsat 

option would come in pretty attractively, but then there would have 

to be a robust internal discussion in the Congress as whether or 

not they wanted to have that on-ramp, or really—rather, they 

wanted to continue with the current appropriations language. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Pace. And this next question 

is directed to Dr. Scott and Mr. Schingler. According to the 2007 

Earth Science Decadal Survey, an emerging source of data is the 

commercial sector. In the past, a program of Earth observations 

was associated almost exclusively with government managed or 

government sponsored projects. Today, commercial sources of Earth 

information are rapidly increasing in availability and scope. Commercial satellite systems are now reliable sources of high resolution 

Earth imagery, and commercial remote sensing companies have 

greatly expanded their offerings. In your opinion, where does the 

commercial remote sensing sector stand today, and how can the 

commercial sector fulfill civil government Earth observation needs? 

Dr. Scott, you first, and then Mr. Schingler. 

Dr. SCOTT. So I’d say—I’ll break the answer down into two parts. 

The first part is to leverage those data sources that already exist, 

bearing in mind not to break the business model. So we’ve talked 

a fair bit about where sharing of data can be bounded by licensing. 
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So, for example, sharing of data to the research community, but 

perhaps not in a way that undermines the commercial benefit 

broadly. We have such an agreement in place with NGA, where 

NGA has quite a degree of ability to share within the government, 

with coalition partners, with allies, but that does not undermine 

our ability to serve our other commercial customers with different 

licensing models. So it’s possible for those to coexist. 

Then I think the second part is to leverage the commercial sector 

to create data sources that might not yet exist, but which could be 

created cost-effectively, because the commercial sector is able to acquire systems and operate them in a manner that is typically more 

efficient than traditional government acquisition. And the best situation is certainly one where the commercial provider, if you will, 

lives in the house that it builds, where it leverages the same system to support government and non-government needs, and so the 

totality of its business is based on the success or failure of that system. So the incentives of the commercial provider are aligned with 

the government. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Scott. Mr. Schingler? 

Mr. SCHINGLER. The decadal survey for Earth science was a 

great step forward, because it was actually the first time that it 

was done by the National Academies and Earth Science, so it really 

did provide a prioritized list of the data that needed to be collected, 

from a scientific basis. 

Within that, they had a call for venture class missions, and— 

which, in my opinion, is one of the greater things that we could do 

in order to lower barrier of entry for new scientists to come in to 

understand our planet. However, the sensors were not there, the 

industrial base was not there in order to reach a price point at the 

time that the National Academies report was released. Today it’s 

very different. You could actually see that launch access to space 

is still a major barrier, and part of NASA launch services, together 

with SMD, is helping to fund $17 million for three new commercial 

nano launch capabilities and access to space. It’s a really, really 

good step forward. 

But when you combine those things together, you could think 

about a portfolio of different scientific activities, some of which 

bring about a rapid amount of capability, taking more risk, but at 

a much decreased cost. And then with that, that can then help 

smooth our future critical path into the future. Thanks. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Schingler. Now I’d like to recognize the gentlelady from Maryland—Ms. Bonamici, okay. I’m 

sorry. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, witnesses, 

for your testimony. Dr. Pace, you said in your testimony that in acquiring commercial data, NASA should ensure it gets sufficient 

rights so that data sets should be—can be shared for scientific, 

non-commercial purposes. It should also ensure that it has sufficient insight into how the data were generated so that scientific 

peer review can independently assess conclusions based on those 

data. So Dr. Goward brought us some lessons from history. So how 

is that accomplished? Is that through regulation, or through really 

good negotiation? How does NASA ensure that it gets those rights, 

and that it has that insight? 
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Dr. PACE. I think it has been described, actually, by Dr. Scott 

that there are a wide variety of rights that you can buy. In some 

ways, the idea of purchasing data is kind of a misnomer. What 

you—you really don’t buy a computer program. You buy a license 

to use that computer program. So the question is, what’s the negotiation over the bundle of rights you can get? An NGA, of course, 

has a way of negotiating certain rights. So it becomes a competitive 

aspect, and there’s a cost tradeoff. It becomes part of the make or 

buy decision for the government. So the government goes in and 

says, I want to acquire certain kinds of information, data, to do my 

public mission. I can decide to build a government satellite to do 

that at a certain amount of cost, sometimes more than what the 

private sector would do, but then I have more flexibility down 

range. Or I can decide to buy a bundle of licensing rights to go get 

the same sort of thing. And this is where having a large buyer, like 

NGA, can be leveraged, you know, for the benefit of the government. 

So I think it’s fundamentally a business analysis, make or buy, 

and then fundamentally it’s a legal negotiation and a competitive 

process, and that companies should come in and be prepared to bid 

a range of activities. Now, if it’s something like a decadal science 

priority, I would say that there be a high, high priority on having 

very deep metadata that you get because you’re trying to do something at a very much cutting edge. There may be no commercial 

counterpart for that decadal science priority. And so then the question of build or buy becomes really of can the government do it 

more efficiently, or can a private sector party do it efficiently? 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much. Dr. Busalacchi, for a public-private partnership that supports NASA’s requirements for 

basic and applied research, how does that compare with a publicprivate partnership that could support NOAA’s operational weather 

mission? When we’re considering evaluating those public-private 

partnerships, what are the differences, and how would we evaluate 

those? 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. Thank you very much. First, there’s a clear difference between NASA research and NOAA operations. They’re 

often seen as parallel, but there are significant differences. Let me 

draw on the NOAA operations example. In order to support numerical—operational numerical weather prediction, the demands of 

providing a forecast on time scales from minutes, to a day, or a 

couple days into the future, require those observations to be taken 

down, adjusted into the model, and those bits can actually then fall 

on the floor after they’re used for supporting the numerical weather prediction. 

Now, we’ve learned that those data do have value for other applications. However, in the case of NASA research, when you’re looking at time scales from days, to weeks, months, and years, you’re 

very concerned about the stability, the continuity, insight to the algorithms that you may not have because of proprietary reasons 

when dealing with the private sector. So there’s a difference in 

time scale, and a clear difference in the need for stable, continuous 

calibrated and validated records on the research side. 

Ms. BONAMICI. And that leads me to my next question, for Mr. 

Schingler and Mr.—and Dr. Scott. Many Earth science objectives 
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require long, stable, uninterrupted time series measurements. Can 

the commercial market support such a long term operation? With 

NOAA weather data, for example, it’s important to have open, publicly accessible data so our—other countries will share their data 

with us, and the American public has access as well. So what happens if the U.S. buys data, and then can’t share it? If NASA contracts out its Earth science work with a predictable, reliable funding stream, would the public-private sector accommodate requirements to make that data public? 

Mr. SCHINGLER. So the commercial community can absolutely 

help to support time series measurements in a reliable and predictable way in no other case that our commercial customers demand 

it as well. So that is absolutely something that the community can 

do. When it comes to NOAA, and when it comes to the license 

around publicly available data, I think that needs to be incorporated into the business models of the companies. 

So perhaps you could use an example of what we know in the 

aerospace community with GPS and selective availability. So there 

could be a downgraded version that is available to the U.S. Government that is bought, then made as open data, with then higher fidelity data for some of their commercial customers. So that is 

something that you can then coexist, and come up with a sustainable business model around, while you still actually create a public 

good, and provide that service to the government. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Dr. Scott? 

Dr. SCOTT. Well, in terms of data continuity, we’ve been providing data since 1999, which, relative to the Landsat program, 

doesn’t go back to 1972, but for the commercial remote sensing industry, is certainly the longest uninterrupted record of continuous 

observation. I’ll also mention, just as an aside, the commercial sector has put quite a degree of effort into a high degree of fidelity 

and calibration of that data, leveraging, in fact, a lot of work that 

NASA had done over the Landsat program. 

In terms of open availability, I think open is—it feels very binary. It feels like it’s either completely open, or it’s not open at all. 

And, as Dr. Pace was saying, it’s very analog. There’s a wide range 

of gradation. I’ll use for—DigitalGlobe as an example. We make 

data available to web portals, Google, Apple, and others, that you 

can download on your mobile device. You’d say, well, that’s open. 

How does that not undermine the commercial market for 

DigitalGlobe’s data? Because there are certain rights and certain 

limitations on the data that’s available that mean that it’s possible 

for us to, in a very granular way, enable data for different customers with different rights to meet their specific needs. 

So I want you to imagine, for example, making data available 

that had rights for sharing for research purposes, but not for commercial purposes. Or rights that were available for sharing with 

other nations, but not for sharing for commercial purposes. So 

I—— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

Thank you. 

Dr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
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Chairman BABIN. Yes, ma’am, thank you. I now recognize the 

gentleman from Oklahoma, Chairman Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Chairman Babin. I’d like to thank 

all of our panelists for being here. I was hoping maybe next time 

we could get a few more degrees on the panel. With all these doctors, for a second I thought I was in a hospital, but I’m glad I’m 

not in a hospital. So it’s great to see all of you. Dr. Scott, I wanted 

to, number one, thank you for the service you’ve already given to 

this great country. You took great risk upon yourself, and created 

something that brought us to where we are today, which is why 

we’re even having this discussion, so thank you for your service, 

and all you’ve already done. 

Dr. Goward, I wanted to address your comments earlier. I read 

your testimony, and I had a different takeaway from what I just 

heard. And I wanted to see if maybe I could have you maybe enlighten us a little more about what your thoughts are going forward. One of the things I read is—it says today, with the maturing 

of new sensor and satellite technologies, the opportunity exists to 

fly at least four Landsat observatories at the same total cost as a 

single satellite which uses the traditional technology of Landsat-8. 

So when you talk about these new technologies, it sound—your testimony that I read sounded a lot like Mr. Schingler. Can you share 

with us your thoughts? Do you believe we can move towards a 

Landsat kind of commercial capability? Can you turn on your 

microphone, please? 

Dr. GOWARD. Thank you. I’m not sure it would be commercial. I 

mean, that’s really outside of my purview in many ways. But, my 

former student and colleague, Darryl Williams, and I put together 

an EV–2 proposal through Global Science and Technology, and in 

that we worked with Surry Satellite, and it’s a U.S. based company 

at this time. And we did a proposal which showed that, for about 

$130 million, we could build a prototype system. Wouldn’t be fully 

complimentary with Landsat, but sufficiently to supplement and 

compliment Landsat. That’s substantially less than what this 

last—Landsat-8 has cost us. GST then went on to do further work 

with Surry. In a fully complementary Landsat mission, was able to 

demonstrate that, for about a quarter of a million dollars—quartermillion—$250 million they could build a fully complementary system. 

It’s my view that we should give this a try now, and get that 

technology out on the table, because, again, from our scientific experience, I don’t believe that the commercial potential of the 

Landsat mission will be realized until we get, as my colleague to 

the right mentioned, daily repeat coverage. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Right. Okay. 

Dr. GOWARD. The land dynamics just happen too fast, and you 

don’t see it every 16 days, when clouds block you at least 50 percent of the time. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. I’m running out of time here. I wanted 

to move to Dr. Pace. You mentioned in your testimony that the 

Earth sciences missions have—the demands have grown, and the 

requirements have grown, and yet there are opportunities where 

we can share the cost because there are non-NASA customers, potentially. And you mentioned Landsat is one of those places where 
93 

we could do commercialization, but then you mentioned that it was 

precluded by Congress. I’m very interested in this. What did Congress—why did Congress preclude this? 

Dr. PACE. Well, my understanding is, if I read the NASA Appropriations Conference report, it states, ‘‘The Committee’’—‘‘Conference does not concur with various Administration efforts to develop alternative out of the box approaches to this data collection’’—referring to Landsat—‘‘whether they are dependent on commercial or international partners.’’ And so essentially this said, 

build another Landsat satellite similar to what you’ve already been 

building. And I have a sense of deja vu with this because I was the 

guy at the Commerce Department who was told to get Landsat out 

of the Commerce Department at that time, so I wasn’t very popular 

with my other agency colleagues. 

One of the things that we looked at were alternatives for 

LightSAT or SmallSAT versions of Landsat in 1992. We were taking advantage of some SDI technologies that had come out of Livermore Laboratories and other places, and so there were theoretical 

designs, and they were all just that, theoretical, but for LightSAT 

versions of Landsat that Dr. Goward was also talking about. And 

so it strikes me that today, given the greater design maturity and 

experience we have with small satellites, that we should go back 

and be looking at more innovative ways of doing things. The reason 

we wanted to look at SmallSATs back then is we felt that cost 

growth would be a problem for any agency that took over Landsat. 

And so that’s why I said in my testimony that if we simply continue with only the traditional practices, that is actually going to 

be more risky than having some innovative options in the portfolio 

that could lower costs in the longer term. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. That—and I’m out of time, Mr. Chairman, but as far as the appropriations, I guess, Conference report, 

that language is unfortunate. I don’t think that necessarily reflects 

the view of a lot of people that serve on this Committee, on both 

sides of the aisle. So I need to delve down into that a little bit 

more. Maybe, Mr. Chairman, if we could do a second round, I’d appreciate that. Over to you. Thank you. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I’d be happy to defer to 

the Ranking Member from Maryland, if she would prefer that. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much. 

Chairman BABIN. Sorry about that. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much. Just a little confusion here, 

just moving around. I’m curious—OSTP’s national plans for civil 

observation includes an action entitled Explore Commercial Solutions, where federal agencies are actually tasked with identifying 

cost-effective commercial solutions to encourage private sector innovation while they preserve the public good nature of Earth observations. In particular, agencies are asked to consider a variety of options for ownership, management, and utilization of Earth observation systems and data, including commercial data buys and commercial data management. In developing such options, agencies are 

to preserve the principles of full and open data sharing, competitive 

sourcing, and best value in return for public investment, and I’m 
94 

curious as to the viewpoints, if we could, quickly, should be the 

first steps in implementing this kind of guidance from OSTP. Starting with you, Dr. Pace? 

Dr. PACE. Well, I think one of the things that ought to be looked 

at is—look across all of the agencies that are involved in this sort 

of remote sensing. This means looking at what NGA is doing with 

its strategy, look at what NOAA is being asked to do, look at what 

NASA’s looking to do. So don’t look at it as simply an agency—single agency only sort of thing. It’s really across the administration. 

And then you should be able to see, what portfolio mixture am 

I doing? Am I just—what things are being done as large traditional 

satellites? What areas do I have innovative smaller satellites, and 

what areas do I have a mixture of small data buys, or licensing, 

pilot programs? So I’m not trying to say what those number ought 

to be. I’m saying there ought to be a portfolio, and then there ought 

to be a discussion within this Committee, and within both sides of 

the Hill, as to what the right amounts of effort ought to be in those 

areas. But you ought to have a mixed portfolio, not just a single 

one. 

And so I don’t think that the OSTP direction is quite being followed at point. I also don’t think that the decadal survey recommendations, to look at more innovative sourcings, are being followed. And I think that NASA in particular is being burdened by 

large operational ongoing missions that—there’s all kinds of good 

reasons why they’re there, lack of appropriation allocations for 

NOAA, problems with the 302(b) allocation, all those sorts of 

things. But nonetheless, NASA is getting more burdens than simply you would expect from its decadal science queries. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Dr. Goward, do you have an opinion about this? 

Dr. GOWARD. Thank you. Just thought of four general guidelines 

in my experience over the years is—as Dr. Busalacchi had mentioned, insight versus oversight in private-public partnerships is 

really critical, otherwise private industry gets hampered in innovating in the—in their work. But from the other side, private industry has to be willing to participate in arrangements where the 

observations are available for no cost distribution. Particularly for 

the Landsat mission we’ve gone from practically no usage of the 

historical record to usage that’s in the millions over the last 2 to 

three years because USGS has been willing to provide low cost— 

no cost access to the data record. 

Honestly, one of the limitations on—was that they were not allowed to compete in the applied commercial marketplace, and this 

was a serious problem for them. The—that company was unable to 

really build on their capacity to develop the commercial marketplace. They were prevented from doing so. 

Ms. EDWARDS. In the time that I have remaining, do any of the 

other witnesses have an opinion about OSTP’s guidance, and how 

we can begin implementing that guidance? 

Dr. SCOTT. I’d say one of the first things to do is look at what 

the industry is both doing and capable of doing. There’s often a 

tendency within government to make assumptions about the industry that are, in fact, not founded in fact, and a good place to start 

would be to reach out to the industry and find out what the indus-
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try thinks, what the industry is doing, what the industry is capable 

of doing. 

Ms. EDWARDS. And Dr. B, because I am butchering your name. 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. That’s fine, I’m used to it. So I’ve already spoke 

to the issue of the heritage of the methodology. In the case of 

SeaWiFS, with respect to data access challenge, in order for Orbital 

Sciences to market ocean color data, NASA did not have free and 

open access to the data, and overall this data access arrangement 

worked well for research. The researchers had to register and 

verify that they were only using SeaWiFS data for research, and 

not for commercial purposes. And even though most of the research 

with SeaWiFS was done in delayed mode, we even still, within the 

rights of the data license, had access to the data in real time for 

certain cruises. 

So, going forward, any public-private partnerships need to develop a cost model based on data latency, archival, access, and resolution. It’s going to be really issue to sort of—really important to 

tackle those issues. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, and I yield the balance of 

my—well, I don’t have any time, but I yield it anyway. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. Let’s see. I’d like to 

recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 

the panel for being here today. Dr. Goward, you talked about 

Landsat being the Rodney Dangerfield, but, you know, I would like 

to give it maybe a little bit of respect today. Having worked in the 

forestry industry, I’ve seen how the imagery can be used. You 

know, in all—we’ve had developments in the analytics, being able 

to look at the images and gain more from the images. You know, 

in a wintertime photograph you can tell coniferous trees from deciduous trees. And then—now, through spectral imagery, you can 

look at the different signatures of the colors of the leaves, and get 

a species distribution through it. 

So I know that the analytics have advanced, but how would you 

say the image resolution and quality of data has changed for 

Landsat over its 43 year history? And maybe, just briefly, Landsat1 versus Landsat-8? 

Dr. GOWARD. The changes have been subtle. The changes occurred between Landsats 3 and 4, when we went from one type of 

a sensor, MSS, to thematic mapper, TM. And then with the LOI 

on Landsat 8, a number of changes occurred. Additional bits of 

data to characterize illumination conditions, narrowing of the 

bands to increase avoidance of atmospheric contamination. 

So they may be subtle, but they get critically important information that allows us to more and more reliably evaluate forests, agricultural production, other features that we just simply get better 

at as we refine our instrumentation. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. So we’ve got a long record of continuous and 

comparable observation that has allowed users to document 

changes to the land surface and other features over decades. What 

are the advantages and disadvantage of—and disadvantages of deploying Landsat instruments on other satellites, whether government or commercial, instead of recreating the same Landsat satellite as the one vehicle for U.S. moderate resolution land imaging? 
96 

Dr. GOWARD. I see no reason not to deploy an equitable instrument on a variety of platforms. The things you have to be careful 

about are the orbital patterns, whether you’re in a sun synchronous, or in a solar variant observation condition. But you’re 

certainly not constrained to a single platform. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. So you think we can maintain the aspects of 

the data continuity with different platforms? 

Dr. GOWARD. No, absolutely, and it’s more that the detail level 

of the instrument characteristics is critical. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Okay. So the cost of Landsat-8 was about a billion dollars, and the Administration is now preparing to develop 

Landsat-9, I think the last I saw a 2023 launch for Landsat-9, 

which is essentially a clone of Landsat-8. Is there a rush to develop 

Landsat-9, or does the government have the time to evaluate all 

options for satisfying these data requirements? And what would 

you recommend NASA do? 

Dr. GOWARD. It’s an interesting problem. The design life of 

Landsat-8, from an engineering point of view, is five years. So that, 

by the time we get to 2023, we’re over ten years. Now, do we suffer 

a failure in between time? I don’t know. We certainly had had 

problems with Landsat-7 early on, and it could happen again. So 

are we in a rush? Should be, because we should move that timeline 

for the next launch to an earlier date, if at all possible. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. So how many Landsats are we getting imagery 

from now? Are there still two—— 

Dr. GOWARD. Still two. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. And what—those are eight and—— 

Dr. GOWARD. And 7. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Okay. 

Dr. GOWARD. And 7, of course, has a partially functioning mirror 

system. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Okay. And with that I’ll yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Westerman. Now I’d like to 

recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to thank 

both Chairmen and both Ranking Members for putting this together. And thank all of you for coming. It’s been fascinating. 

Mr. Schingler, a—probably a stupid question, but you mentioned 

that you have the—100 doves up in a single sun-synchronous orbit. 

Are these spaced all around the globe, in the orbit itself,and is it 

really just a single orbit, or a single orbit for each dove? 

Mr. SCHINGLER. Yeah, let me clarify. So over the last 2–1/2 years 

we have launched 101 satellites on nine different rockets. All of 

those have been as secondary payloads, and the majority of them 

have been through the International Space Station. And the International Space Station is in a 52 degree orbit, so it is not in a sunsynchronous orbit. Over the next 12 months we have a number of 

launches, including one that is a dedicated rocket, that is going to 

our ideal orbit, which is a 475 kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. 

And that one launch, in and of itself, will be able to allow for us 

to have daily coverage. 

And the way that that works is we distribute the satellites along 

track in one particular sun-synchronous orbit, and as the Earth ro-
97 

tates underneath it, our satellites act together, kind of like a line 

scanner, in order to image the entire surface of the Earth. 

Mr. BEYER. Line scanner’s a great image, so thank you—and the 

size of the satellites? 

Mr. SCHINGLER. The size of our satellites are five kilograms. 

They’re in the 3U form factor, so it is—one person can pick it up. 

Mr. BEYER. Yeah, very cool. And, Dr. Goward, your last recommendation said NASA and the U.S. private sector need to move 

away from increasingly expensive single satellite builds towards 

lower cost, high temporal repeat Landsat class observatories, et 

cetera. Is this what Planet Labs is doing, or is this what 

DigitalGlobe is doing? 

Dr. GOWARD. What Planet Labs and DigitalGlobe are doing are 

not the same thing. What we’re really talking about, for a Landsat 

system, is one that covers four different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and some of those require a more complex platform than what, for example, Planet Earth will be flying. And 

when I mention the lower cost SmallSAT alternative, we’re talking 

about more on the order of three to 500 kilogram satellites, rather 

than five kilogram. 

Mr. BEYER. Okay. Great, thank—yes, Mr. Schingler? 

Mr. SCHINGLER. Yeah, absolutely, the Landsat platform is really 

quite exquisite in its spectral capability. And that is something 

that we have longitudinal information over the last 42 years, and 

want to continue moving forward. I think part of the concept is it 

may be possible to launch an instrument that does not do all of the 

spectral bands in one satellite, but instead you can have a couple 

of different satellites that then focus on the phenomenology that we 

want to continue as a global community with Landsat. 

Mr. BEYER. One of the things I’ve been impressed by today 

with—including all these degrees, as Chairman Bridenstine noticed, is how many of you have moved back and forth from government to private sector. Dr. Pace, do you have any concern, with 

your NASA and your private sector perspective, that there would 

be a loss of in house expertise as we outsource more and more to 

the commercial sector? 

Dr. PACE. That’s a great question. I think that’s actually really 

central to thinking about what do we want NASA to do to be a 

smart buyer? I think NASA should always have one or two spacecraft builds in house that they do themselves to make sure they 

have that hands-on expertise. At the same time, I think that NASA 

is comfortable and—with the idea of buying—and relying on the 

private sector, and doing commercial data buys. 

And I think, as NASA has been asked to do more and more missions without really an increase in its top line, I think it’s going 

to become more incumbent on them to find ways of partnering with 

the private sector. So I would first say make sure they have expertise in house at places like Goddard, but also make sure that they 

start relying more on the private sector to acquire the data. And, 

as Dr. Scott said, the best way to do that is to ask industry. Too 

often we can assume what industry can do. And it’s perfectly possible for industry not to be able to meet requirements at a certain 

point in time, so it’s always important to have a backup plan. Having a primary plan of, you know, a conventional spacecraft, okay, 
98 

but make sure you also have a backup plan, or an alternative, 

doing something more innovative. And, really, I think the agency 

should be doing both. 

Mr. BEYER. Great, thank you. Dr. Busalacchi, I only have a 

minute, but you were deeply involved in SeaWiFS. Was that cost 

effective? And using Orbital Sciences, was there added value 

gained from partnering that perhaps offset the extra cost? 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. Well, SeaWiFS was a grand success in terms of 

the quality of the science data we got, and the cost to the government was actually less as a direct result of the private sector data 

buy. Now, whether or not Orbital Sciences made a profit, I’m not 

the one to speak about that, in Virginia, for example. But, again, 

it was a grand success from the science point of view. 

But what we don’t realize, oftentimes, is how important the engineers at Goddard—the role that they play. Even though this was 

technically a data buy, there were a number of challenges that 

came up. The mission was delayed by four years, and Goddard engineers, in the end, provided considerable support on the engineering side for power system, altitude control, navigation system, component quality. We had a very good working relationship, but the 

point was—is that—as opposed to a number of the topics here this 

morning, there was not a lot of heritage in the instrument. There 

was the prior coastal zone color scanner, but beyond that, there 

was a novel lunar calibration, so there was really the need for expert engineering support from an organization like Goddard. 

Mr. BEYER. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, I’d like to recognize the gentleman from 

Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and to Dr. Scott, long 

time no see. Appreciated the tour last week of DigitalGlobe. And 

I guess my question—I’ll start with you. You’ve got this giant library of information. Who gets access? Who curates it? How does 

anybody figure out all the stuff that’s in there? 

Dr. SCOTT. So we have generated about 100 petabytes or so of 

data. It’s accessible in the cloud. It’s catalogued by an increasing 

amount of metadata, starting with just when it was collected, but 

growing to include a lot of information about what’s actually in the 

image. And we’ve exposed that to our customer community via 

something we call a geospatial big data platform, which is fundamentally about not trying to take these huge data boulders and 

say, you know, here’s 100 petabytes of data, good luck finding a 

place to put it, instead enabling people to access data in the cloud 

with a set of algorithms that are wrapped around it to enable exploitation, and a growing ecosystem of partners who contribute 

those algorithms to enable the exploitation. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. So if I wanted to see something involving the 

soils in some country in Africa, how do I get that information to 

you, and then how do you provide me that slice of information? 

Dr. SCOTT. So there are a couple of ways of gaining access to 

that. If you’re interested in viewing the data, just looking at the 

data, there are web services where we expose that data to you over 

the web. If you’re interested in performing analytics, you can bring 

your algorithms, or use algorithms from one of our partners, like 
99 

Harris, who offers the ENVI toolkit, the image processing toolkit, 

and perform that processing in the cloud. We have a set of application program interfaces, as well as user interfaces, that allow you 

to search for what’s available in that particular region, and then 

drop that data into your Amazon S3 bucket for subsequent processing. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I guess what I’m—and I appreciate that. So 

you—DigitalGlobe—and to the other panelists, please jump in if 

you want—we’re accumulating lots of information out there. And 

we don’t know all the potential users of that, and precisely what 

they want to do with it. So if I am the United States Government— 

let’s say I’m the Air Force. I pay you some certain fee for access 

to all of it, any time I want it, and then some other user of the 

library may have a much more limited cost, and, you know, library 

card that allows just access to certain things. Is that how it works? 

Dr. SCOTT. I think that’s a great model, actually. It’s sort of a 

customized library card with rights that are consistent with how 

you intend to use the data. We support a range of business models. 

Some of those business models involve the actual delivery of data. 

Other business models involve—you get a library card for data analytics, and we receive our compensation in any of a number of 

ways, some of which are revenue share based, some of which are 

subscription fee based. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. So to all of the panelists, I mean, if 

there were one or two things that we, as members of Congress, 

could do to make sure that the technology that you all are developing, whether it’s on the information side, or flying the satellite 

side, or the optical pieces, what could we do, maintaining security 

for the nation, yet allowing you to continue to grow the commercial 

side of this? Mr. Schingler. 

Mr. SCHINGLER. So I think the first thing is we should figure out 

a way to relatively quickly get access to the commercial capability 

that’s there, and to engage in a dialogue to really understand 

more—not just what the product is, but the capabilities of industry. 

That will help to inform strategies around procurement, and other 

things, into the future. 

And secondly is—for things into the future, we should look at 

other transactional authorities, which do allow for the commercial 

entity to continue to build their commercial service, while relatively 

quickly sell a capability to the U.S. Government. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Pace? 

Dr. PACE. I would add that we should probably be looking beyond 

just the initial data acquisition and the satellite side itself, and to 

think about where could commercial providers be part of the data 

archiving and processing, analysis function in the cloud. That is 

not something which is a government unique function. And there’s 

also systems where commercial users could share, you know, the 

same hosting infrastructure, and that’s whole other market, you 

know, in and of itself. It’s just data. It’s not particularly specialized. 

The second thing I would mention, this is probably a subject of 

a different hearing, is making sure that NOAA’s commercial licensing and regulatory process responds to the changes in technologies 

in markets that have been going on. The regulations that were 
100 

written in the early ’90s really, in many cases, have become a bit 

outmoded. There’s a lot that’s really good, but there’s a lot that’s 

really largely irrelevant today, and I think that kind of regulatory 

responsiveness is a subject that the industry needs. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, and I yield back to the Chair. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. Now we’re going to go back 

through for a second round of questions, and we’re going to limit 

this to three minutes, if that’s okay with everyone. 

So my first question would be to Dr. Pace. In your testimony you 

mentioned that there’s a need to protect the electromagnetic spectrum used by remote sensing and GPS. Now, if you would, please 

explain in more detail to the Committee. 

Dr. PACE. Well, sir, for example, remote sensing is crucially reliant upon things like GPS to provide the actual location of the data. 

So if there’s interference with GPS, there’s interference with the remote sensing industry. 

Chairman BABIN. Uh-huh. 

Dr. PACE. There’s also great pressure on all space spectrum by 

commercial communications. Everybody understands the importance of mobile broadband, the importance of that to the economy 

and growing the economy, but also there are unique functions that 

are under great pressure. One area in particular that’s come up recently, and I’m sorry to use the phrase, six to nine gigahertz. 

There’s some high frequencies that are being talked about for—in 

a Senate—on the Senate side, and this incorporates—covers a lot 

of microwave sounders that are used by multiple weather systems. 

And you can’t move to other areas. The water molecule doesn’t vibrate in some places. It’s not flexible. And so I would suggest paying attention to spectrum as an underlying need of the industry, 

particularly for critical sensors that really can’t be moved anyplace 

else. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. And then this would be a question 

for Dr. Goward and Dr. Pace. Does the U.S. Government have a requirement to maintain one or two Landsat satellites at a time? 

Dr. GOWARD. Undefined. 

Chairman BABIN. Undefined? 

Dr. GOWARD. Um-hum. 

Chairman BABIN. Okay. That answered that. How about Dr. 

Pace? Same thing? 

Dr. PACE. Nothing to add. It’s—that’s been part of the long story 

of Landsat. 

Chairman BABIN. Okay. And then, real quick, all—in the next 

ten years, what major developments will be made commercial, remote sensing, and could these developments be used by NASA to 

improve their imaging efforts, or decrease the cost of remote sensing to the government? And if one of you would be glad to answer 

that, I would appreciate it. Dr. Scott? 

Dr. SCOTT. Well, I think there are a number that have already 

been made, and this may actually be relevant to one of the earlier 

questions. Our most recent satellite launch, WorldView-3, incorporates 16 spectral bands of high resolution data, plus an additional 11 spectral bands of 30m resolution atmospheric data. And 

that was done leveraging technology that had been developed for 

the Landsat program, but at a very small fraction of the cost of a 
101 

Landsat satellite. That’s just an example of the sort of innovations 

that are happening in the commercial sector that I would encourage the government to understand better in making its future decisions. 

Chairman BABIN. Okay. Thank you. I would like to recognize Mr. 

Perlmutter again, from Colorado. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Can I pass to Mr. Bridenstine as I’m collecting 

my thoughts here? 

Chairman BABIN. Certainly. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. 

Chairman BABIN. I want to recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Chairman Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. So you’re giving me all three of your minutes? 

Is that what’s going on here? No, I’m kidding. I’ll take my own 

three minutes. Thank you, Chairman, and Mr. Perlmutter. A couple of thoughts I had. You mentioned, Mr. Schingler, the exquisite 

spectral bands and capabilities from Landsat, and maybe that’s not 

your area of expertise, but you could have a distributed architecture, or disaggregation, where you could have different satellites 

doing different things. 

I heard, you know, Dr. Pace talk about—in his testimony he 

talks about maybe not commercializing Landsat, but using other 

sources to gather data. Is it possible, when you think about 

Landsat, and the commercial opportunities that are out there right 

now, can we gather similar data that would be useful, given the exquisite spectral bands that Landsat uses? Can commercial provide 

a resource in addition to Landsat, Dr. Pace? 

Dr. PACE. Yeah, I think it can, and I think it would make for a 

robust series. Landsat data continuity is one of the precious things 

that the science community has, and rightly wants to guard, so 

having additional satellites has been mentioned. The idea of a single Landsat was never the original idea. It was always to have this 

kind of continuous observation. That, to me, sounds like a service 

that could be provided, with maybe government as a foundation, 

but with complements from the private sector in a way that, I 

would argue, is analogous to what’s been talked about with GPS 

radio occultation. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. I noticed that in your testimony, and thank 

you for bringing that up. I was not expecting that, but that’s something we’ve worked hard on this Committee to have, radio occultation move alongside the other great capabilities that are being provided by NOAA, to move alongside it. And we’ve actually carved 

out some funding in our bill here on this Committee to make sure 

that NOAA could purchase that data. And, of course, working with 

Dr. Voles and Admiral Brown on those capabilities has been a 

great experience. 

One last thing with my last 50 seconds, and maybe this is a 

question for Dr. Scott, we heard Dr. Pace talk about consistency in 

the regulatory framework coming from the Department of Commerce, coming from NOAA. Of course, that’s critically important to 

this kind of industry. You make investments, and those investments are for your shareholders. At the same time, you’re signing 

up contracts. When those regulations change in midstream, that 

can have negative consequences. Can you share with us if there’s 
102 

anything we can do to ensure that there’s—maybe we can, maybe 

we can’t, but how does that affect you, as a business owner? 

Dr. SCOTT. So when you build satellites that take a few years to 

build, and operate for a decade or longer, and have invested billions of dollars in the course of doing that, the stability of the regulatory environment is absolutely essential. You need to know, and 

your customers need to know, that they can rely on continuity of 

service, and that there won’t be variability subject to essentially 

the whim of a government agency. 

We’ve been fortunate that we have enjoyed, to date, an environment where, while it has not necessarily been as forward leaning 

as we would like, it’s been stable. The ability of that regulatory environment to, instead of react to, but rather enable industry to anticipate market needs, that’s something that we would like to see 

change. The pace of technology is moving far faster than the regulatory environment that was conceived back in the 1990s can remotely keep up with. And that’s really one of the biggest impediments in the industry going forward. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir, thank you. Now I’d like to recognize 

the gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, and I’ll be brief. I’m just curious to 

know if there are some markers that can help us determine when 

and if NASA should use public-private partnerships for data collection. Is there, you know, some—one point, or—and then how should 

they be evaluated? Because I think we’ve gotten a handle on how 

we evaluate NASA driven, internal driven projects. How do we 

evaluate public-private partnerships? And if I could start with Dr. 

Scott, to Mr. Schingler, to Dr. Busalacchi in that order, and do it 

as quickly as possible. How to determine when and if, and how to 

evaluate them? 

Dr. SCOTT. Probably the simplest phrase is start with asking. So 

start with exposing to industry what the needs are, and at the 

same time, engage in a dialogue with industry to understand what 

the capabilities are. One of the reasons why we have historically 

been able to acquire satellites very cost-effectively is that we approach the problem from both ends. We approach it from the standpoint of what is the technical capability, and then what are the 

business needs and the business opportunities? And we look for the 

intersection of those, as opposed to approaching it unilaterally from 

one side and say, well, you know, here’s what we want, never mind 

the fact that it’s nearly impossible to achieve it. We look for the 

intersection. 

Mr. SCHINGLER. So for when to evaluate it, or for when to approach public-private partnerships, I think you first do need to 

evaluate it first, before you get into a complex arrangement between industry and government. And that evaluation, just exactly 

as Dr. Scott is saying, should be based on the service as it is today, 

and the direction of where it’s going. And it may not be from the 

traditional requirements driven approach, but more of a capabilities-based approach. And that the assessment of the data shouldn’t 

be necessarily taken by itself, but actually in conjunction with 

other data assets that are already there. 
103 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. So by forming points, as I mentioned, heritage, 

NASA’s very good at assessing technical readiness, what is the reduced cost to the government, and what is the market demand in 

the commercial sector, and then evaluating what is the elimination, 

or reduction, in the financial and operational risk, what is the increased efficiency to be had, and what is the reduction in the fixed 

cost? I say those five main things can be evaluated. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you. 25 seconds to spare, and I yield. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. Appreciate it, Ms. Edwards. And 

I’d like to recognize the gentleman from Colorado. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Dr. 

Busalacchi, just a question, and congratulations, I think, are in 

order for you to co-chair the decadal —- you know, I’ve got to tell 

you, before I ever got on this Committee, I never heard the word 

decadal before, and I never was quite sure—apparently it’s every 

ten years. It doesn’t have anything to do with decay, does—— 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. No, but our report will be done in much less 

than a decade. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. All right. So my question to you is, as a cochair with Dr. Abdalati, from the University of Colorado, by the 

way, are you going to be focusing on how the data’s collected, or 

what types of data are collected, or both? I mean, can you share 

what your focus of the committee’s going to be? 

Dr. BUSALACCHI. So I’m not being facetious, it is all of the above. 

It will be looking at what census—or what missions where in the 

queue from the previous decadal survey that have yet to be realized, what new science and applications may be possible going forward, and, as we’ve been hearing here, what role can the private 

sector play, and what are the new technologies? Just right now the 

academy is having—spinning up a report that will be out before 

our report on CubeSATs. And so I fully agree with Mr. Schingler, 

access to space is a key issue, and if we could lower down the cost 

to access to space, the potential is there for these CubeSATs to be 

up there, and really change sort of our approach. So, again, short 

answer is yes to all of, existing science, new science, new technologies, and commercialization in the private sector. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Doctor, and I’ll yield back to the 

Chair. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter. I want to thank 

the witnesses for their testimony, and the Members for your questions. The record will remain open for two weeks for additional 

written comments, and written questions from members. And with 

that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:59 a.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] 

(105) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
106 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Scott Pace 
107 
108 
109 
110 
111 
112 
113 
114 
115 
116 
117 
118 

Responses by Dr. Walter Scott 
119 
120 
121 
122 
123 
124 
125 
126 
127 

Responses by Mr. Robbie Schingler 
128 
129 
130 
131 
132 
133 
134 
135 

Responses by Dr. Samuel Goward 
136 
137 
138 
139 
140 
141 

Responses by Dr. Antonio Busalacchi 
142 
143 
144 
145 
146 
147 
148 

Æ