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NASA and the Environment - The Case of Ozone Depletion (Paperback)
Loot Price: R314
Discovery Miles 3 140
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NASA and the Environment - The Case of Ozone Depletion (Paperback)
Series: NASA History
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Loot Price R314
Discovery Miles 3 140
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is
widely perceived as a space agency, since its inception NASA has
had a mission dedicated to the home planet. Initially, this mission
involved using space to better observe and predict weather and to
enable worldwide communication. Meteorological and communication
satellites showed the value of space for earthly endeavors in the
1960s. In 1972, NASA launched Landsat, and the era of
earth-resource monitoring began. At the same time, in the late
1960s and early 1970s, the environmental movement swept throughout
the United Sates and most industrialized countries. The first Earth
Day event took place in 1970, and the government generally began to
pay much more attention to issues of environmental quality.
Mitigating pollution became an overriding objective for many
agencies. NASA's existing mission to observe planet Earth was
augmented in these years and directed more toward environmental
quality. In the 1980s, NASA sought to plan and establish a new
environmental effort that eventuated in the 1990s with the Earth
Observing System (EOS). The Agency was able to make its initial
mark via atmospheric monitoring, specifically ozone depletion. An
important policy stimulus in many respects, ozone depletion spawned
the Montreal Protocol of 1987 (the most significant international
environmental treaty then in existence). It also was an issue
critical to NASA's history that served as a bridge linking NASA's
weather and land-resource satellites to NASA's concern for the
global changes affecting the home planet. Significantly, as a
global environmental problem, ozone depletion underscored the
importance of NASA's ability to observe Earth from space. Moreover,
the NASA management team's ability to apply large-scale research
efforts and mobilize the talents of other agencies and the private
sector illuminated its role as a "lead" agency capable of crossing
organizational boundaries as well as the science-policy divide. The
approach used to examine the evolving relationship between an
agency and a program focuses on decision-making. The
decision-making process goes through a number of stages that can
span many years. The ozone decision-making process began in the
late 1960s. Along the way, NASA assumed a new role and developed
new relationships with other agencies. It made key decisions in the
program's birth and development. While no longer acute, the ozone
policy process continues, and there is increased scientific
recognition of the link between ozone depletion and climate change.
That link, along with other issues remaining to be understood, has
required constant attention. Ozone depletion thus represents an
important case study in the history of NASA and environmental
sciences. It is one from which many lessons can be learned about
the management of science and technology and the application of
knowledge to policy-making decisions. In tracking NASA's
decision-making process, the author has made use of the various
books on ozone policy-and it should be emphasized this paper's
orientation is on ozone policy and the NASA government program, not
the history of environmental science.
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