The perfectly fine, already-paid-for satellites Trump wants to destroy in a fiery atmospheric reentry

NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside of the agency told CNN.

The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science .

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal takes a hatchet to NASA’s Earth science spending for fiscal year 2026, which begins in October.

The greenhouse gas monitoring missions, known collectively as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, are some of the many Earth science casualties in the proposal.

Other satellites and instruments on the chopp