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!
It is a waste of money. NASA has been completely corrupt in this global warming scam. Also, the trip to the moon was a gigantic boondoggle. At least we the price scan devices one now sees at the supermarket checkout line for this /sarc