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In a stunning break from years of inaction, the US Congress has tabled legislation ordering NASA to finally deal with the critically important Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 was submitted last week to the House of Representatives. Section 207 of this Act is plainly entitled: “Plan For Disposition Of Deep Space Climate Observatory.”

If this Act becomes law, NASA must finally cough up some answers on why this vital piece of space hardware has been sitting in a box for the last seven years.

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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.

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The DeSmogBlog team welcomes writer and researcher Mitchell Anderson to the team.

Over the next few months Mitchell will be writing an investigative series on the US administration's mothballing of the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).