[Vision2020] 424 $Million GLORY Climate Satellite Lost: NASA Names Mishap Board For Taurus XL Launch Failure

[Ted Moffett]

How many teachers' annual salaries would this failure pay for?  I'm
not a rocket scientist, but it seems that launching a satellite should
be a mature reliable technology, after the thousands of satellites
humanity has placed into orbit:

GLORY mission science information:

http://glory.giss.nasa.gov/

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00110y
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NASA Names Mishap Board For Taurus XL Launch Failure Investigation

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Glory/main/index.html
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http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/05/business/la-fi-satellites-20110305

NASA's Glory satellite launch fails

The Taurus XL rocket built by Orbital Sciences failed to lift NASA's
Earth-observation satellite into orbit and plummeted into the Pacific
Ocean. The failed mission cost $424 million.

March 05, 2011  |By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

A rocket, standing more than nine stories tall, blasted off from
Vandenberg Air Force Base but failed to lift a NASA Earth-observation
satellite into orbit and plummeted into the Pacific Ocean. The failed
mission cost $424 million, the space agency said.

It is the second consecutive time that NASA has encountered the
problem with the Taurus XL rocket built by Orbital Sciences Corp. of
Dulles, Va.

NASA scientists believe the launch on Friday failed because the
satellite's protective cover, which opens like a clamshell, did not
separate as expected.

"Obviously, this is a terrific disappointment and we feel bad for
letting NASA … down," said Barron Beneski, an Orbital Sciences
spokesman. "People have dedicated years of their lives into this."

NASA's Glory satellite was designed to help scientists understand how
the sun and particles of matter in the atmosphere called aerosols
affect the Earth's climate. It was also built by Orbital in Virginia.

Everything seemed to go as planned from Vandenberg, located northwest
of Santa Barbara, shortly after the 3:09 a.m. PST liftoff. Three
minutes later, the cover was supposed to separate and the satellite
was expected to enter orbit. That didn't happen.

"We failed to make orbit," Omar Baez, NASA's launch director, said at
a news conference. "All indications are that the satellite and the
rocket are in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere."

It marks the second time in a row that NASA has encountered a problem
with the protective shell separating from the satellite. The space
agency's previous Taurus XL launch attempt on Feb. 24, 2009, carrying
another Earth science spacecraft, dubbed the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory, also failed to reach orbit because of lack of separation.

Orbital Sciences and NASA investigated the matter and believed that
they had identified the problem. On Friday, Orbital Sciences said it
was too early to tell whether the latest failure was linked to the
issue they previously encountered.

"Understandably, people are thinking this is the same problem all over
again," Beneski said. "It's too early to tell. We have to evaluate all
the data before we can say that's true."

Although the satellite probably will never be recovered, sensors on
the spacecraft captured enough information for engineers to identify a
problem, Beneski said.

Since 1994, Orbital Sciences has attempted to launch a Taurus XL
rocket a total of nine times. It has been successful in six of those
attempts.

"That's not a great record," said Marco Caceres, senior space analyst
for research firm Teal Group Corp. "Part of the problem is that the
Taurus just doesn't launch enough. It's hard to develop a launch
rhythm if the rocket is only going up once every few years."

Both Orbital Sciences and NASA plan to create investigation boards
made up of engineers and scientists to evaluate the cause of Friday's
failure.

NASA has another Earth sciences satellite slated to launch on a Taurus
rocket in 2013. The space agency plans to wait and see the results of
the investigation board before it goes forward with the launch.

Orbital Sciences shares lost 30 cents, or about 2%, on Friday, closing
at $18.17.

Also Friday, the launch attempt of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B Orbital
Test Vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Fla., was scrubbed because of bad
weather. The launch was rescheduled for Saturday at 1:09 p.m. PST.

william.hennigan at latimes.com
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett