Second Nasa climate-change satellite lauch failure in two years

 NASA: Rocket probably in ocean after failed launch

Declines to release the full accident report, citing sensitive and
proprietary information.

Rat is smelled over the suspicious nature of launch failures, secrecy.

By JESSICA GRESKO
Mar 4, 8:46 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite is
in the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt, NASA officials said
Friday.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off around
2:10 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

During a news conference Friday officials explained that a protective
shell or fairing atop the rocket did not separate from the satellite as
it should have about three minutes after the launch. That left the Glory
spacecraft without the velocity to reach orbit.

NASA suffered a similar mishap two years ago when a satellite that would
have studied global warming crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after
launching from the same kind of rocket that carried Glory. Officials
said Friday that Glory likely wound up landing near where the previous
satellite did.

"We failed to make orbit," NASA launch director Omar Baez said Friday.
"Indications are that the satellite and rocket ... is in the southern
Pacific Ocean somewhere."

Had Glory reached orbit it would have been on a three-year mission to
analyze how airborne particles affect Earth's climate. Besides
monitoring particles in the atmosphere, it would also have tracked solar
radiation to determine the sun's effect on climate change.

Glory was supposed to study tiny atmospheric particles known as
aerosols, which reflect and trap sunlight. The vast majority occurs
naturally, spewed into the atmosphere by volcanoes, forest fires and
desert storms. Aerosols can also come from manmade sources such as the
burning of fossil fuel.

The $424 million mission is managed by the NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Maryland.

Friday's launch came after engineers spent more than a week
troubleshooting a glitch that led to a last-minute scrub and two years
studying what went wrong with the 2009 mission that also crashed.

An accident board was formed to investigate and corrective action was
taken to prevent future problems. A duplicate is now scheduled to fly
from Vandenberg in 2013.

Investigators spent several months testing hardware, interviewing
engineers and reviewing data and documents. The probe did not find
evidence of widespread testing negligence or management shortcomings,
but NASA declined to release the full accident report, citing sensitive
and proprietary information.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (yea?  Well fuck
you)

  In article


From your lips to Guido's ears.

--
"Even I realized that money was to politicians what the ecalyptus tree is to
koala bears: food, water, shelter and something to crap on."
 ---PJ O'Rourke

 responding to
http://www.homeownershub.com/maintenance/Second-Nasa-climate-change-satellite-lauch-failure-in-two-ye-624135-.htm  
DA wrote:
Home Guy wrote:


There is no incident report: it's only been 6 hours since the launch.
Also, both the rocket and the satellite were manufactured by a private
contractor, Orbital Sciences Corporation ( http://www.orbital.com/  ) who,
together with NASA, will produce such report in due time.


There is an executive summary of the previous 2009 failure investigation
available online at
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/369037main_OCOexecutivesummary_71609.pdf  
It is not a full report because (from NASA):
\"The official report of the board contains information restricted by U.S.
International Traffic in Arms Regulations and company-sensitive
proprietary information.\"

Sounds reasonable to me. The more private businesses get involved in space
exploration, the more \"secrecy\" you'll see - no one wants to divulge
\"company-sensitive proprietary information\" unless required by law.
Especially now that Orbital finally has a competitor - Space X (
http://www.spacex.com/  )


Not really, they convened a press-conference and indicated their
preliminary findings. This from NASA:

\"At a news conference following the unsuccessful attempt to place the
Glory spacecraft in orbit, a team from NASA and Orbital Sciences
Corporation, maker of the Taurus XL rocket, discussed the failure of the
rocket's fairing to separate. The fairing, which covers and protects the
spacecraft during launch and ascent, underwent a redesign of its
separation system after a similar failure two years ago. The new system
has been successfully used on another Orbital launch vehicle several
times.\"

Here is NASA TV coverage of the press-conference:
http://tinyurl.com/4dol9dx

In any case, so it was a climate-related mission. Mars missions until very
recently have also been riddled with failures, what do you make of that?

Interestingly, Orbital Sciences Corporation has a contract for the second
Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission, OCO-2 to be launched in February
2013. It's the same rocket. If it fails to separate once again, we should
be ready for conspiracy theorists to come up with yet another angle:
\"Corporate America doesn't want the truth about climate change to be
known!\". It will be fun to watch that one play out!


-------------------------------------
 /\_/\
((@v@)) NIGHT
():::()  OWL
 VV-VV

 On 3/4/2011 7:59 AM, Home Guy wrote:

The cause of the failure of the mission was determined to be "climate
change". It prompted all the framistans to lose sync and fall out of
alignment which forced all of the command signals to introvert. :-(

TDD