The NDBC lost its access to the tower to service and maintain the equipment after the Coast Guard determined the lighthouse was "structurally unsound".

[5] For over a decade, the Chesapeake Light has hosted a suite of meteorological and climate-observing instruments that take measurements for NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project.

The instrument suite, known as CERES Ocean Validation Experiment (COVE), records the direct beam energy from the sun, the sun's energy scattered by the sky, the amount of sunlight scattered by the ocean surface, wind speed, aerosol composition, air temperature, sea surface temperature and more.

The measurements validate observations made by the CERES satellite system, which is managed by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The collection of CERES instruments, which are mounted on several space-based satellites, has been operating for more than a decade, creating a long-term record of the key driver of Earth's climate – the balance of incoming and outgoing solar radiation known as the "energy budget."