mr. mcinerney for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. powner, one thing that stuck out in your testimony is the confidence level that nasa will meet the 2015 launch date. is that in your mind the biggest threat is that not making that launch date? >> yes. so a kocouple of things. we did some detailed schedule analysis and so there were things that we went into great detail on two of the sensor schedules as well as the spacecraft and ground and we had questions about how the schedules were being managed and the rigor you want with that, and ultimately what that all means it calls into question whether you can hit the key milestones and the milestones have to be hit to ultimately reach the launch date. that coupled with the fact that their own internal assessment showed only 48% confidence level they would hit the october 2015 date, and that raised questions about whether they would be able to do that. we are under the impression if you raised it to 70% confidence level which is what the program ultimately like to operate under, that is go

mr. mcinerney, i would endorse marcus's comment, because there is a 40-year long partnership between nasa and noaa and providing the nation with weather satellites. we came back to that model in essence with the unwinding of the n-pose program and if i could use the analogy since jpss moved out of the dysfunctional household of npos, we have a new team aboard and they have set fresh marks and again in the 13 months i have been around they have been con ssistently meetin the marks. we see great value and productivity in the partnership and in the taxpayer and not with a top notch acquisition within noaa when we have an outstanding one in the partner agency. >> okay. one more question, mr. chairman. has there been analysis of the anticipated operational period of the npp at slight, and what terms in the continuing performance of that instrument? >> i will take the beginning of that. again, the npp spacecraft was developed for a five-year life, and, you know, we have launched it last october. the calibration validation period is going along as planned and in fact, we are a little ahead of sc