Pentagon Stops Sharing

One of the fascinating things about government IT is the extent to which the government's investments in technology and research benefit society as a whole. The government has always provided much of the funding for the type of basic scientific research that has led to development of technologies like personal computers or the Internet. The scientific community relies heavily on the government to provide resources that would otherwise be unavailable.

Which is why it's peculiar that the Pentagon has decided to stop sharing data on incoming meteors with astronomers:

The change is a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks, especially those that burn up over the oceans or in other remote locations. "These systems are extremely useful," says Peter Brown, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. "I think the scientific community benefited enormously." . . .

Brown says that whatever the reason, the end of the relationship has left the tight-knit meteorite community smarting. The global reach of the satellites and the data they supplied were unparalleled, he says. "There's nothing else that even comes close," he says.

The Defense Support Program satellite network is part of the Pentagon's early warning system, which uses 23 satellites to track missile launches and atmospheric nuclear blasts across the globe. The satellites also were apparently perfect for monitoring fireballs. No reason has been given for the abrupt change in policy, but Brian Weeden, a former Air Force captain who now works at the Secure World Foundation offers one possible explanation:

Weeden speculates that the Pentagon may not want details of the new satellites' capabilities to be made public, or it may simply lack the expensive software needed to handle classified and declassified data simultaneously. "The decision may have been made that it was perhaps too difficult to disclose just these data," he says.

Either way, the scientific community is worse off as a result.