CBS News: 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. "All indications are that the satellite and rocket is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere," launch director Omar Baez said in a morning press conference.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. The Glory mission got underway at 5:09:43 a.m. EST (GMT-5) with a sky-lighting launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The rocket's first three solid-fuel stages ignited as planned, but the nose cone fairing did not separate as required two minutes and 58 seconds after liftoff.
"We are at T+plus 300 seconds," Richard Haenke, the ascent commentator, reported. "The vehicle speed error is indicating underperformance, which is expected due to a fairing not separating. We have a report the system did pressurize. However, we still have no indication of the fairing separating." A few moments later, NASA launch director Omar Baez declared a failure…
The Glory satellite, now sleeeping with the fishes
2 comments:
Everyone I know predicted this satellite would not launch, just like the last one 2 years ago. They all felt it was due to Big Green somehow, not wanting the world to know the truth.
when will the US government hold the companies making this substandard crap accountable? i needed data from the OCO satellite which failed to launch. i heard that the same company was making a new launch thing, charging more for it, and not accountable in any way for the loss of the satellite.
in the real world, if you pay for something and it fails and causes substantial loss of property, the supplier is liable.
headdesk.
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