i would like to illustrate briefly, if i may, some of the progress that the systems were bringing online will support and one of the satellites is currently watching tropical depression debby, monitoring her every move and watching the forecasters predict where they will go next so they can help emergency managers prepare. i've brought images and had the staff provide them to you from relevant, current events to demonstrate the advances that they're providing to our forecasters and the emergency management partners. these are specifically some images from the visible infrared suite. we have one that shows fires that are currently active in colorado and wyoming and demonstrate the capability to not only see temperatures associated with wildfires are far more intense than we can do before and locate them miraculously on the ground. we also have images of hurricane debby and tropical storm debby that show the sort of detail on storm intensity and the higher

resolution and create the bands and coming now to some highlights of the progress in each of the programs and the gozar series program is on schedule and on budget for launching the first satellite of fiscal 16. over the last year, some notable milestones achieved include successful completion of the design review and passage of the approval to move toward mission-critical design and successful completion of the spacecraft and the core ground segment and the critical desire reviews and clear progress on the construction of the ground antenna and the acquisition sites, the selection of the launch service provider which was completed this past april. those are remains within the life cycle cost and they're committed to maintaining the $10.8 million figure and the launch operations and sustainment and the serious spacecraft plus the instruments and running them through 2036 as

well as development of the ground system and procurement of the launch. last year, when i appeared before you to discuss the jpss program, we are still in the formulation phase. the transition from end pose, i believe is now behind us and i believe we have the proper program management in place and the teams are working well together. again, major milestones have been achieved in the past years of the launch and successful operations and they've been noted. we are using mpp data operational today three times faster than has been achieved before. we believe the sound program office for life cycle cost and independent reviews and independent review teams in place and we are proceeding toward the first key decision point in july of next year. this is the point in which according to formal nasa practice we will have a full detailed baseline for you. i am confident the cost and schedule presented in the fy-13

budget is sound and they will support a successful program. this $12.9 million figure maintains the instrument suite in the 2010 restructured decision ask it includes over $4.3 billion and the costs that covered noaa's contributions of mpp and the ground systems and the remaining will fund instruments to support the spacecraft, free flyer accommodations for instruments that cannot fit on that footprint and the development of an updated ground system and sustainable operations through 2028. as you all have noted, despite this progress, we still face a gap in coverage to formally document the long held practices of using the available assets that can help mitigate such a gap and be ready to adjust the data from these sources. our prime strategy remains to leverage any remaining

capabilities to existing on-orbit assets from noaa to have the projects from international organizations. i would like to thank your committees for their continued interest in the support of the noaa satellite programs. with nasa's partner in this program, we're on track and headed for success. we have strong, and seasoned managers at the helm that are supported by a dedicated and technical team of talented professionals and we've re-affirmed the partnerships for the jpss program and all parties are moving forward to meet their commit ams and we take our life and property protecting mission very, very seriously. our commitment to you to ensure that the progress we've seen in this past year continues, that these programs stay on schedule and on budget to deliver for a nation is rooted in our commit am to noaa's admission for the country. thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today, and i look forward to the discussion, and i appreciate the extra time. >> thank you, dr. sullivan. i appreciate your testimony.

i now recognize our next witness, mr. watkins from nasa. you are identified for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today to share the nasa whirlwind and the commission to the joint polar satellite system an and noaa's r-series program -- >> could you pull your microphone slightly closer. >> is that better, sir? okay. jpss is critical to the nation's forecasting system, climate monitoring and research activities and nasa and noaa have been partners for over 30 years for the syncronous satellites and the president's direction in 2010, nasa will return to the successful partnership for jpss. since that time the nasa program management office was established and is nearly fully staffed. in addition, noaa and nasa have established joint program

management councils to oversee the noaa portfolio satellites and have integrated their decision-making processes to efficiently and effectively manage this cooperative activity. over the last two years the nasa teams have strengthened their working relationship? i am pleased to report that the nasa no team completed a development of mpp and it was successfully launched on october 28, 2011. activation and initial checkout are now complete and the jpss program have assumed operational control of the satellite and now renamed the national polar orbiting partnership and while mpp was not intended to be used as an operational asset, and noaa will have an mpp data with the forecasting models and as a measure of how well the mpp mission is progressing, no meteorologists are using data products from the instrument in the weather forecast and we're getting excellent performance from the instruments as well.

nasa knows the ak -- nasa is no acquisition agent and now controls the instrument, spacecraft and ground system contracts. the first jpss satellite will essentially be a copy assuming mpp with grades to meet the jpss level one requirements. assuming full funding of the president's 2013 budget request for noaa it is annes it pated that jpss 1 will be ready to launch before the second quarter of fiscal year 2017. close to five years after the october launch of mpp. in addition, the gozar program continues to make progress towards launching gozar. the first satellite of the series and the first quarter of fy-2016. assuming full funding of the president's budget, the program completed its preliminary design phase and the gozar series project conducted a successful

critical design review for the spacecraft and launched vehicle task headquarters to the gozar and go-ss missions which will be launched on atlas 5, 41 series launch vehicles. additionally, all flight instruments, critical design reviews are complete and all of the flight instruments are in flight hardware and fabrication and integration for a test. once again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i appreciate the support of the committee and the congress for these critical programs and would be pleased to answer any questions. >> thank you, mr. watkins. we appreciate your testimony and the final witness is the president of the accountability office. you have five minutes. >> chairman brown, chairman harris, ranking members miller, and members of the subcommittee, i appreciate the opportunity to testify this afternoon on the jpss and gozar programs. starting with jpss, this $13

billion acquisition is proceeding with the satellite by march 2017. this afternoon i would like to fight an overview of the progress to date. the key risks to the program and potential gaps in data satellite kobt newity starting with progress, mpp, the planned demonstration satellite was successfully launched in october 2011 and the instruments were commissioned by march 2012. noaa has made good progress transferring management contracting responsibilities from the old imposed program, and also solid development has occurred on all five sensors soesh yated with the first satellite. specifically, all five are 60% complete and two are 85% complete. last september when i testified before the overall program cost was $11.9 billion. after various cost estimates, the program determined and the new cost estimate should be 14.6

billion, an increase from 2.7 billion from last year's hearing. in working with omb, no official told us they expected the program to be funded roughly $900 million a year, but that omb placed the life cycle gap on the program at $12.9 million. therefore, the program faced a funding gap of $1.7 million in our report being released today highlights options noaa was considering to address this nearly $2 billion funding gap which included removing certain sensors. to its credit, noaa's recently made some tough decisions to address this funding gap. at a high level their plan is to take a more effective approach to the operations and maintenance phase and to hide three sensors on other satellites. this approach to a ride share arrangement helps reduce program costs, but like most options has tradeoffs. in this case, this approach raises schedule risks are no longer in the hands of the jpss program. other risks of the program

reside with the launch vehicle and no decision has yet been made on which launch vehicle will be used. finally turning to potential gaps in satellite data, we continue to be concerned about the afternoon orbit and highlight a 17-month gap if mpp lasts five years and it hits the march 2017 launch date. in our opinion, this is the best case scenario. if mpp lasts more than five years and this gap could be greater. we also highlight continuity concerns for the first time regarding dod's early morning orbit and the european mid-morning orbit. for example, the fall on european satellite may no longer be supported with noaanoaa-fund sensors. we recommended that noaa funded gaps, and noaa plans to issue a report by august to address this recommendation. in summary, noaa, and nasa

continued to make progress on jpss. however, three areas deserve congressional oversight. first, how nasa will operate between the 12.1 gap and significant cost savings with this approach and third how the satellite constellation and all three orbits will be effectively managed to ensure critical weather and climate data. next, i would like to turn to the gozar program. this nearly $11 billion acquisition is for the october 15th launch date. what i'd like to do is highlight the progress, and the program's cost profile including use of management reserves and be on sfshations on the program's schedule and launch dates. before i get to these specifics, i would like to clarify the scope of the gozar program. initially it was the satellite program in 2006 that cost about $11 billion and the key sensor

dropped two satellites, among other things to keep the cost around $7.7 billion. so for about five years we had a fairly stable program, two satellites at 7.7 billion. as part of the 2012 budget request, we add the the two satellites back and increased the cost to $10.9 billion so we're back to where we were in 2006. four satellites costing about $len billion. starting with progress, the program has begun preliminary flight reviews for the program overall. the program is to have the critical design review in august meaning all designs are complete and the program overall is ready for full-scale development. regarding costs, the program continues to operate within the $7.7 billion life cycle cost for the first two satellites. this is the case despite the fact that in our report we highlight cost increases associated with sensors, spacecraft and the ground components over the last two years that tally about $750

million, most notably, the advanced baseline imagery of $148 million and the ground segment grew $198 million and the program will operate within the 7.7 million overall estimate by using manage. ment reserves. initially the bucket tally at $1.7 billion is down to 1.2 billion. 30% have recently been used in significant development remains. two-thirds of the development for the spacecraft and the ground segments remains. in addition during the course of our review, we found the transparency associated with the use of and the remaining balance of the reserves was not where it needed to be and we made associated recommendations to address that. turning to scheduled launch dates, for some of the key designs reviews relate, we also performed a detailed review of the spacecraft ground segment in two sensors, our reviews exposed

questions with the current schedules and raised questions about the october 2015 launch date. in addition, noaa identified schedule risks associated with the key sensor and also with the flight and ground segments and finally, noaa's own assessment claims there's a 48% confidence level that the program will meet and its october 2015 launch date. we made recommendations to address these concerns, mr. chairman. in summary to date, it will operate within the cost estimate of $7.7 billion and the current schedule by effectively using costs and schedule reserves. more transparencies needed on the use of the reserves and in addition questions about the reliability of the program schedule and their own assessments show that the 2015 launch date could slip. this includes my statement and i would be pleased to respond to questions. >> thank you. i thank the whole panel for your

testimony. the committee rules limit question five minutes each when the chair would open the first round of questions and i would have a full committee chair, mr. hall to begin the first round of and recognized for five minutes. mr. chairman, thank you. >> the senate proposed, the science appropriaons and subcommittee proposed and some report language that transferred funding for weather satellite and the acquisition from noaa to nasa and not as bad as mr. miller about not knowing what a satellite might cost and i remember one time when i left the texas judge's seat to take on the job as state senator and our kids hadn't changed schools and my wife and i both assured them we'd help them with our school work and the first week, we started how much was the

national debt and it got my little kid in trouble because he gave the answer i gave him a hell of a lot. the teacher was being looking for and maybe mr. miller and i might know the satellite cost a hell of a lot. what the senate proposed the transfer the weather satellite from noaa to nasa. i guess my question is this going to result in cost savings? she might have one answer and mr. watkins might have another, and i might have another, but -- and you don't have to answer that now, but in a minute, would this result in efficiencies or will it streamline management or will it increase the likelihood of the program's success by meeting requirements on schedule within budget or would you like to answer that, miss sullivan? do you have an opinion on that, probably? >> the administration is taking

it very sersly and it's analyzing potential impacts on all of those areas and what the senate highlighted in their proposal. i don't have an official position from the administration yet so i can't give you details of those considerations. we share the concerns about growth in the program, costs and the consequences that this has had on other elements of noaa's budget so we certainly appreciate where they're coming from on this and they're looking diligently at looking at the possible impacts and assess the places where we assert there will be savings and the things that we hold as priority and mission assurance and management effectiveness and maximum continuity of data. >> that's the sound of a good soldier. >> i highlighted the area that i would focus on and i'm a scientist and have the analysis of what we think impacts those

areas and sharing those with the appropriators and with the administration. >> mr. watkins? >> we've been working to assess the proposal and at this point in time that continues to go on and again, we, too, would want to make sure that we are able to maintain overall schedules and the concerns to getting the critical space assets and space as soon as possible. >> okay. i guess -- your answer is not no and it's not yes. i guess, can you expect you to take a position on this, to a change like this and if so, when with would it happen? >> sir, i don't have the answer to that question. it's my understanding that the administration has taken us

under advisement and the process is ongoing. and for a big company to borrow a lot of money one time and they said, mr. hall, we'll listen to your proposal with an open mind. that's kind of what i'm getting here. you must have an opinion, both of you, on that. you work for noaa. you work for nasa. you're high up there. the proposed transfer is not a trivial thing, and i just have about 40 more seconds. my question is why hasn't the administration -- why have they been silent and can we expect them to take a position? the proposal is -- it's a significant portion of noaa's overall budget. let's also not forget that nasa has its hands full with its own acquisition problems as the goa

listed on its high-risk series. should be fully reviewed by the authorizing committee. i share the senate's frustrations in these programs, i hope this decision not make in the back room. i'm committed to working with the administration of some as much as i possibly can and the senate and my house colleagues to ensure that our nation maintains its credible weather forecasting capabilities. i yield back. >> thank you, chairman hall. i now recognize mr. tonko. >> thank you, mr. chairman. there will be a gap in data in between the end of the productive life and the time that gpss 1 can be launched and data brought online. it may not even last five years for which we are look. as a result, we need a clear plan for how to cope with the

data gap, so to speak. a gap that may start sooner rather than later. dr. sullivan, what is noaa's plan for filling that gap and who have you assigned to manage the effort to identify other data sources and ensure that the data we can get will work seemlessly in our weather prediction models? >> thank you, mr. tonko, for that question. our mission to deliver life and property-protecting forecasts is one we take extremely seriously. no one is more concerned about this gap than my colleagues and i at noaa do. you have asked the most common question we receive from congress and stake holders. i ask myself and if i had a silver bullet answer to magically fix it, i assure you i would give it to you. there's no easy substitute on orbit, just go get it for the

data of the the compatibility it's designed to provide. we are working very hard at this. we have been renewing and reconfirming written and firm commitments with international partners for mutual aid. these are arrangements that arrangements in times of a storm. we have used such arrangements in the past in instances where we had temporary outages of a satellite back in march of 2010, i believe, it was and years prior when other nations have had gap s in their conch. so we're working and ensuring they are in place. we have good understanding of the technical characteristics of many of those data streams. many of them we use as complimentary data to improve the forecasts today. we have begun the efforts with our modelling centers and our weather service to look at what technical changes would be

needed if we did need to and wish to take data streams in that we don't commonly. i would cite one. they have a sounder, the data from which we don't commonly use. it has noise characteristics not suitable for normal models. we have worked hard to whittle those down and understand how 20 accommodate those. that's shortened the time frame it would take to incorporate those data. we will continue such efforts. the goa rightfully, we believe, points out that these plans should be better documented. that's a fair comment. we will deliver on that. they rightly point out that it's not enough just to list out a roster of things one might do. we need to take the positive steps, as your question is suggesting, to be sure we're technically ready and we'll document it appropriately. >> who is leading that? who is taking that effort up? >> our international partnership

work in the overall effort is being lead by our associate administrator and as i alluded to, colleagues both in our shops and the national weather service engaged as well. i assure you i keep a close eye on it. >> and mr. powner, do you have any views on this matter? >> clearly, we'd like to see those plans documented. a couple thoughts here though. the one thing that noaa and nasa control is keeping gpps launch date where it currently is, you need to keep that on track. if that slips, the gap becomes greater. the other thing is with npp over the next year as you look at calibration activities, there might be a greater indication on how long npp will last. the key is to try to get it to last as long as you can and that picture should become clearer when it goes through validation. you need to keep that on track.

>> i would just add we completely agree with that. i thought it was directed towards other comments. >> mr. powner, do you have a view on the current gpp program manager and team that you would be willing to share? >> yeah, i think there's strong program management there. we have seen many managers over the years testifying before this committee, and clearly when you look at where the program is now, it's much better positioned than where it's been in the past. and when you look at the aggressive mitigation of risk, one of the key things to highlight the funding gap to get down to the cap on the program is being aggressively worked by the program. those plans make sense right now. obviously, we need to see more details, but i think the aggressive management of risk has been where we want it it. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. tonko. now i recognize my colleague

from maryland, dr. harris. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. as i indicated in my opening statement, the status quo with respect may not be a sustainable option. and a question we should be asking is to what alternative options we have. to that i'd like to enter into the record a piece at the university of washington. it's entitled "weather x." >> without objection. >> thank you very much. dr. mass makes the argument that noaa should consider pursuing a model similar to that which nasa pursued with space x. the weather data necessary for forecasts could be provided by a private company that could build, launch and maintain the satellites. dr. sullivan, what's the attitude toward the model? >> i would say -- i have not read the blog post in detail,

dr. harris, so i can't comment on the particulars cited there. in general, my posture would be that innovative ideas deserve careful exploration. last week we testified about the desirability and the importance of the weather service, as indeed all of noaa, being resilient and adaptable for changes in our customer base in the demands for products and services, the changes of our challenges of our fiscal times. so those are important attributes. >> i understand there are private sector models of this type being proposed to noaa. at a hearing earlier this year, we heard from a company providing severe storm forecasting capability and with that in mind, can you be specific about how noaa is evaluating these proposals? how specifically they would go forward if they could? >> well, i think there are two different characteristics there. the proposal that i understand

was brought to us with respect to that instrument was that we procure the instrument or the data from it as a substitute for current data op our environmental satellite service organization in concert with the national weather service evaluate those proposals to determine the suitability and the judged reliability and feasibility of the proposal. in terms of technical maturity and cost reliability and the estimates. all satellites and instruments are easy in power point. most are harder in actuality. to my mind, the space x type model is a different thing. if the proposal is that a third party actually set their standards, set their targets and decide to do something and open a new market, which is in a nutshell my understanding of this proposal, and as i think we have seen nasa do, one applies a different posture to a proposal like that. we have not had such a one come before us at noaa. i thwe