Orbiting Carbon Observatory wiki link. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) is a NASA satellite mission intended to provide global space-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The original spacecraft was lost in a launch failure on February 24, 2009, when the payload fairing of the Taurus rocket which was carrying it failed to separate during ascent.[1] The added mass of the fairing prevented the satellite from reaching orbit.[2] It subsequently re-entered the atmosphere and crashed into the Indian Ocean near Antarctica.[3][4] The replacement satellite, Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), is now scheduled to be launched July 2, 2014 aboard a Delta II rocket, following a July 1 scrubbed launch.
Launch statistics:
The OCO-2 satellite will become the 228th primary payload put into space by the venerable Delta 2 rocket over the past 25 years. Here's a look at some other stats about today's mission. This will be:
The 367th Delta rocket launch since 1960
The 234th Delta launch with NASA involvement
The 152nd Delta 2 rocket mission since 1989
The 11th Delta 2 to fly in the 7320 configuration
The 51st Delta 2 mission overseen by NASA
The 42nd Delta 2 rocket launch from Vandenberg AFB
The 3rd launch of the Delta family in 2014
The 7th United Launch Alliance flight this year
The 84th ULA launch overall
Last night's launch attempt:
Dunn said an engineer responsible for the water system could not verify that the deluge system was operating normally, resulting in a mandatory hold in the countdown at about T-minus 45 seconds.
"What that deluge system does is it protects the launch mount from the high temperatures of the launch, and it gives some amount of suppression from that huge shockwave from the ignition of the engine," Dunn said.
"It's a bit of a disappointment for the launch team when you have a great countdown up to that point," Dunn said. "However, these are things we prepare for. We're a professional team. We know how to handle this."
NASA suffered a major scientific — and financial — disaster in 2009 when a rocket carrying the original satellite plummeted into the waters off Antarctica minutes after soaring from Vandenberg Air Force Base along the central California coast.
After the 2009 failure, a team of experts appointed by NASA traced the problem to a piece of rocket hardware — the nose cone protecting the satellite — that did not separate as planned. The extra weight prevented Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Taurus XL rocket from reaching orbit.
Two years later, it happened again. Despite a design change, NASA’s Glory satellite was lost aboard another Taurus XL rocket. The mission was supposed to study solar radiation and airborne particles that reflect and trap sunlight.
The back-to-back fiascos led NASA to choose the Delta 2 rocket made by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co. The Delta 2 had faced an uncertain future after its main client, the U.S. Air Force, switched to the more powerful Delta 4.
http://www.lewistownsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/537860/NASA-to-launch-global-warming-satellite-after-loss.html?isap=1&nav=5016
(Thanks to deks for posting this on the previous thread I posted about the launch attempt last night.)
I’m hoping that this third attempt at lofting a CO2-monitoring sat is a crash and burn!