An unnamed source within NASA intimately familiar with the mothballed Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission spoke to Desmog Blog on the condition of anonymity.

The story is incredible.

The big question has always been: who would want to kill a $100 million fully completed climate satellite that has sat in a box since the 2000 presidential election - even though dozens of leading scientists have demanded it be launched?

“Apparently Cheney was the hatchet man”, said the source. “Bush tried the keep his hands clean so he didn’t have direct involvement. It almost reminds me of the way Nixon used to operate…He assigned Cheney to be the hatchet man job on DSCOVR… Bush’s fingerprints weren’t on it but Cheney’s were… That’s what we heard through the grapevine.”

It seems the Air Force is more interested in looking at the Sun than our warming planet and plans are being made to send the spacecraft one million miles distant – only to look the other way.

Somewhere in Maryland is a metal box containing a fully completed climate spacecraft called the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) that could save the world.

What happened? How could the US government possibly justify killing DSCOVR given the importance of climate change and after over 90% of the project expenses had already been incurred? What role did petty partisan politics play in this? Did the oil lobby have any influence on this decision?

Over the next few months I'm going to dig into the history of DSCOVR, the reasons why it was canceled, and why NASA refuses to release any internal documents on the decision to kill the mission.

Click here to donate to our research project and help find out who killed the DSCOVR project.