Fed up with rising costs and schedule delays, Senate appropriators are pushing a plan that would strip the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of its satellite programs.

NASA would be charged with funding and building weather and climate satellites now maintained by NOAA, under legislation approved yesterday by the Senate's Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations subcommittee in a 17-1 vote.

"We have said time and time and time and again to NOAA, 'Get your act together,'" said Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). "Continual cost overruns are eating up NOAA's budget, and quite frankly, eating up the budget and goodwill of this committee."

The total cost of one NOAA satellite program, the Joint Polar Satellite System, grew by $1 billion in the past year, to $12.9 billion, she noted. Meanwhile, the proposed allocation for the spending bill Mikulski shepherds shrank by $1 billion this year, to $51.9 billion.

Looking to trim spending wherever possible, Mikulski said allowing the agencies to "be the best at what [they're] best at" was a natural choice. "NASA does know how to buy and build satellites," she said. "NOAA knows how to operate those satellites and get the most value."

The argument won the support of the appropriations panel's ranking member, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who said she "agreed wholeheartedly that this would eliminate a duplication and put that program where it ought to be."

Mikulski's plan, which will be put to a vote by the full Senate Appropriations Committee tomorrow, is the latest attempt by lawmakers to reform NOAA's troubled satellite office.

Much of the attention has focused on one program, the Joint Polar Satellite System, designed to provide data for civilian weather forecasts put out by NOAA's National Weather Service.

The estimated cost of the program -- first proposed in the 1990s as a collaboration among NOAA, the Defense Department and NASA -- ballooned from $6.5 billion to $13.5 billion and its launch schedule was delayed by years when President Obama took office. In 2010, the administration decided to split the effort into separate Air Force and NOAA programs.

The NOAA half, JPSS, was further hampered by Congress' decision to slash its budget to just $382 million in fiscal 2011, a third of what the White House sought. The agency now estimates the program's total cost at $12.9 billion, up $1 billion from a year ago.

And NOAA says the first JPSS satellite won't launch until mid-2017, months after its predecessor reaches the end of its projected lifetime. The result, the agency believes, is a near-certain future gap in weather and climate data that could last up to two years.

A traditional distinction bypassed

And that has lawmakers complaining, loudly.

"Just a few years ago, in [fiscal] 2010, satellite procurement represented just over 25 percent of the NOAA budget. In this [fiscal] 2013 proposal, that jumps to 36.6 percent," Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said last month. "This situation seems unsustainable."

But it's not clear whether NASA is equipped to take over NOAA's stable of weather and climate satellites.

Such a move would breach the federal government's traditional distinction between "experimental" satellites designed to test new instruments and sensors and "operational" satellites designed to provide high-quality, real-time data for specific uses, like weather forecasts.

Although NASA now acts as NOAA's procurement agent, the space agency's own stable of 15 Earth-observing satellites is composed solely of experimental probes.

"NASA in general is a research and development organization, and that's what we do," said agency spokesman Steve Cole. "Once a program becomes valued as something the nation wants to do routinely, a different agency has to take it over and do the funding. And that's what's happened for many years with weather satellites."

NASA is also struggling with budget conundrums of its own, as the White House and Congress tangle over a successor to the now-defunct space shuttle and the agency's planned mission to Mars.

The White House has pushed Congress to increase NASA's spending on Earth science missions, reversing a decline that began when the George W. Bush administration decided to emphasize space exploration at the expense of other programs.

2 climate missions scratched

But NASA has still felt the effects of belt-tightening on Capitol Hill. Last year, the White House shelved two of the agency's planned climate satellite missions. Both were listed as top priorities by the National Academy of Sciences in a 2007 report that warned the nation's Earth-observing capability was "at great risk" after cumulative rounds of budget cutting -- most of it at NASA.

"There are fundamental issues here that need to be resolved at a thoughtful, national level," said Rick Anthes, president emeritus of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Anthes, who helped lead the National Academy of Sciences committee that wrote the 2007 report, noted that it called for the White House to develop a coordinated national strategy for Earth-observing satellites -- something neither the Bush nor Obama administration has done.

"Since we don't have that strategy, you have these ad hoc proposals, like this Senate bill, that may not do any harm, may not do any good -- but we just don't know," he said.

The details of Mikulski's plan are still sketchy. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not released the text of its Commerce-Justice-Science bill, although lawmakers offered some details at yesterday's subcommittee markup.

NASA's budget would rise to $19.4 billion, $1.6 billion above the fiscal 2012 enacted level. All of that money would go to satellites transferred from NOAA, the committee said.

NOAA's budget would drop to $3.4 billion, a $1.47 billion decrease from the current level. The White House has requested $5.5 billion for NOAA in fiscal 2013.

It's not clear whether the Senate bill would entirely eliminate NOAA's satellite office, which operates ground stations that receive satellite data, archives those data and analyzes them in addition to commissioning new orbiters.

The office received $1.877 billion in fiscal 2012, and the White House has requested $2.041 billion for it in fiscal 2013.