Things have gone awry early on the U.S. effort to develop a new generation of geostationary-orbiting weather satellites: The system capability and program scope have been scaled back significantly, and yet the projected costs continue to rise. Scariest of all, award of the prime contracts for both the space and ground segments of the program, dubbed Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R), are still more than half a year away.

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