Posted on 03/04/2011 4:11:06 AM PST by TSgt
WASHINGTON — The earth observation satellite Glory failed to reach orbit on Friday after its protective cover did not detach following its launch, a NASA official said.
"The fairing did not separate and the vehicle does not have sufficient velocity with the fairing on to achieve orbit," an official said on NASA TV, adding that there was "no indication as to why it did not separate."
He said there would be a press briefing at around 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Not a tin-foil hat kind of guy (usually), but this does seem a little convenient. Actually, it probably is an engineering problem not a political one. Apparently this is not the first time this launch vehicle has had fairing separation problems. They are now only 1 for 4 in their last 4 attempts - not a good record.
"they" being the RSO - Range Safety Officer.
One of the books by an astronaut that I read said, on the manned side
of rocketry, the RSOs don't socialize with the people they may
have to abort [the launches of].
For those who're complaining that the satellite would have generated nothing but propaganda - science is the ONLY thing that will meaningfully debunk the CAGW scam. It is true that possibly the data could be manipulated before release, but I don't believe that kind of conspiracy can last and it would be incredibly damaging if such a conspiracy were to be revealed. See "Climategate".
One of the better reality checks on the climate alarmists are the satellite measurements of global average sea level. They are a direct measure of "true" global warming.
Now that is interesting. I didn’t realize their other “fairing problem” launch was also a climate science mission. That is starting to smell - pretty convenient that we’re being denied real, hard data that would no-doubt refute the AGW scam.
lol, ironic, isn’t it?
Wonderful! But I do not understand what I am seeing.
This just shows how much NASA, and our space technology in general, has deteriorated over the years. We used to be able to do this kind of stuff successfully almost in our sleep. Now we can't even get a lousy aeroshell to separate properly. That kind of thing is kid's stuff, comparatively speaking.
Why does it matter if the satellite went down. These “scientists” already have the report written on the outcome of this mission.
I'm guessing you're looking at the sea level data?
The easiest way to see what I mean is to look at one of the plots: 
The important thing to notice is that since 2003 the rate of increase in ocean level has decreased. This is directly contrarian to the idea that the Earth's heat content is increasing. EVERY global warming model predicts most of the heat being transferred to the oceans.
The average sea level is affected by both thermal expansion and runoff from melting landlocked ice. It is quite sensitive to thermal expansion. So, if there were a meaningful effect from global warming, one would expect to see the rate of sea level increase go up, not down. Since those numbers represent an average of the entire ocean surface, mixing issues and spatial temperature variation are automatically taken into account.
(You should also realize that in general the sea level has been increasing since the last Ice Age, so the fact that it's increasing at all is neither surprising or exceptional.)
4MAR2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/04/scitech/main20039189.shtml
NASA launch mishap: Satellite crashes into ocean
Second launch failure in a row for Taurus rocket as Glory climate satellite fails to reach low-Earth orbit
The protective nose cone of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA’s Glory environmental research satellite apparently failed to separate after launch Friday, preventing the spacecraft from achieving orbit in a $424 million failure.
It was the second nose cone failure in a row for a Taurus XL rocket following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite, reports CBS News space analyst William Harwood.
“This is a pretty tough night for all of us,” Grabe said. “A little over two years ago, we had a similar tough night when we conducted a Taurus launch for the OCO mission. That mission suffered a failure ... of the fairing to separate. We conducted an extensive investigation of that anomaly and we traced the most probable cause to a failure of the fairing separation initiation system.
“We spent the last two years doing the analysis on what went wrong the last time, redesigning the system and testing the components of the system. We went so far as to completely change out the initiation system to a system we use on one of our other vehicles, the Minotaur 4. And in the intervening two years, that system has flown successfully three times. So we really went into this flight feeling confident we had really nailed the fairing issue. And then we came up with the results Omar described.”
For NASA, the second Taurus XL failure in a row drove losses to nearly $700 million.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/04/nasas-glory-satellite-fails-to-reach-orbit/#more-35222
NASA’s Glory spacecraft launched aboard a Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Friday at 5:09:45 a.m. EST failed to reach orbit.
Telemetry indicated the fairing, the protective shell atop the Taurus XL rocket, did not separate as expected about three minutes after launch.
24FEB2009
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/24/bad-week-for-hardware-orbiting-carbon-observatory-satellite-burns-up/
Bad week for hardware: Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite burns up
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — A satellite launched from California failed to reach orbit today, crashing into the sea near Antarctica and dooming a $273 million mission to study global-warming gases.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite didn’t reach orbit after a 1:55 a.m. launch because the “payload fairing” failed to separate, NASA said. The fairing covers the top of the satellite during launch and needs to come off so the satellite can detach from the rocket and enter orbit.
While launch and separation of the rocket’s first stage went as planned, a clamshell-shaped “fairing” covering the satellite failed to open, meaning it was too heavy to reach orbit, Brunschwyler said on NASA’s online television station.
“As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not reach orbit,” Brunschwyler said. Indications are the satellite “landed just short of Antarctica, in the ocean.”
Both the satellite and launch rocket were built by Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. John Brunschwyler, Orbital Sciences’s mission manager, said “over the past 10 years, we’ve flown a nearly perfect record — 56 out of 57 vehicles and we’ve not had any problems with this particular fairing design.”
NASA’s investment was $273 million for the design, development and launch operations. Insurance details on the mission may be given later today, NASA said.
24JUN2010
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/space/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3A04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385Post%3A2f688b39-04d7-43a8-8ff6-695af3aca746
NASA Selects Launcher for Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
NASA has selected Orbital Sciences Corp., under a $70 million services agreement, for the February 2013 launching of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a replacement for the original greenhouse gas monitoring spacecraft that was lost during a 2009 launch mishap. OCO-2 is funded as part of NASA’s proposed $1.8 billion, 2011 Earth sciences budget.The original spacecraft, launched atop an Orbital Sciences Taurus XL, plummeted into the ocean near Antarctica after lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2009. A mishap investigation board traced the loss to a failure of the rocket’s fairing separation mechanism. OCO-1 was the cornerstone of a $273 million, two-year NASA mission to track global carbon dioxide emissions from orbit for the first time. Climate experts, concerned about heat trapped in the atmosphere by rising levels of CO2, urged the space agency to move quickly to develop a similar spacecraft following the mishap.
Orbital Sciences will provide a Taurus XL 3110, also launched from Vandenberg, for the 2013 re-flight.
Like its predecessor, OCO-2 is designed to identify distinct sources of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. The new spacecraft will provide a global map of natural as well as human carbon dioxide sources and “sinks” — places in the atmosphere where the colorless gas accumulates. Carbon dioxide is the leading greenhouse gas attributed to human activities. Carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone and methane are among gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from sunlight that would otherwise be reflected off the Earth’s surface and back into space. The National Research Council has suggested OCO-2 could provide a baseline for data on carbon emissions as part of a new climate treaty intended to address concerns over global warming.
Two AGW satellites doomed to failure for the same problem on the same kind of rocket. Makes ya wonder if there was some sabotaging going on around here!
I wonder whether they had launch insurance for either of those failed missions, or whether launch insurance is only something that the commercial communications satellites use.
After a couple big losses like that in a row, it may not be possible to get launch insurance in the future for similar payloads.
The OCO-2 is in the works so it looks as if government is rewarding failure at the cost of the taxpayer.
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It had to be . . . Cheney. . . . Cheney! . . . CHENEY!!! |
“I blame global warming.”
Nope. They missed the hole in the ozone layer, so the ozone knocked it back down.
I dunno, fairing failed to come off due to being glued on?
Who knows what was onboard the rocket?
It can be anything worthless, something dummy...
It could be, but I can't thing of any reason that it might.
That's not what the Gaia Worshipers want us to think. They want everyone to be alarmed by any change, be it sea level, global average temperature, the ozone hole, etc.
It's all political theater and manipulation of the masses for power.
That’s one expensive Glory hole! ;)
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