Reuters reported on Monday that without adequate funding for maintenance, we can expect NOAA-run observation satellites to be dropping like flies from orbit — 58% of them by 2010, and pretty much the rest save five scrappy ones by 2020. And although the high-tech Ragnarok was foretold as far ago as last March, still no mission “go / no go” from the White House on what do about it.

Perhaps their rationale for decision-stalling is related to their lunar base idea — just put a huge magnifying lens on the moon and we can see the changing earth better than ever! Just watch out for that sun glare though. We wouldn’t want to burn something.