Although the family of satellites that feed data to the supercomputers of the National Weather Service saved many lives during Hurricane Katrina, the huge scientific powerhouse comprised of the systems will be weakened for such tasks because the number of instruments now gathering environmental data aboard American satellites will probably drop by 40 percent within the next three years. The report from The U.S. National Academy of Sciences called Earth Science and Applications From Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond is a survey meant to provide a road map for the next decade in the field. The survey finds that the condition of the U.S. Earth-observing satellites has substantially degraded since 2005, when the same panel wrote in an interim report that the satellite system was at risk of collapsing. A drop in NASA's budget for Earth science applications and the demands of the space shuttle program, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the International Space Station have also contributed to NASA's need to substantially scale back or cancel climate- and weather-forecasting plans. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s budget has gotten a slightly larger budget and has taken on additional obligations, so there is no net gain for NOAA Earth-observation abilities. The survey strongly encourages NASA to restore its Earth sciences budget to the $2 billion level by 2010 and to increase NOAA's budget to an amount that is feasibly and reasonably adequate for climate applications.