Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/04/2011 5:23:14 AM PST by Skeez
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- A rocket that blasted off early Friday carrying an Earth-observation satellite has failed to reach orbit, NASA said.
The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off about 2:10 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base, officials said .
But NASA said in a brief statement 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 launch commentator George Diller said.
"The flight was going well until the time of fairing separation," Diller said. "We did not have a successful fairing separation from the Taurus and there was insufficient velocity with the fairing still on for the vehicle to achieve orbit."
The status of the flight wasn't immediately clear and flight officials didn't immediately respond to calls for further comment.
Glory was launched on a three-year mission to analyze how airborne particles affect Earth's climate. Besides monitoring particles in the atmosphere, it will also track solar radiation to determine the sun's effect on climate change.
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.
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.
NASA suffered a mishap two years ago when a global warming satellite also destined to join the Earth-observation network crashed into the ocean near Antarctica...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Actually, if you put a Hayabusa engine in one of those you can have a lot of fun!!
With any government agency "legitimately study" is a mighty big if. Most of them follow a political agenda to keep the money flowing.
Divine intervention.
Awe, c'mon! Even I could come up with something better than 'no comment': "...Taurus' launch was successful even as its mission changed from one of studying the impact of atmospheric particulate on global warming to studying the impact of space junk on global warming."
What a huge waste of taxpayer money.
American Thinker article for you to consider:
James Hansen: Abusing the Public TrustML/NJ
No problem, they can just continue making up their global warming data.
I do wonder however, how this impacts nasa’s mission to promote islam
How does Al Gore get his fat b*tt into that thing? That is Al Gore’s car isn’t it? I mean if it isn’t he’s a hypocrite.
They’d just do what they seem to always do. Tell us what they want us to know. And if the findings don’t come out like they think they should, they will just twist it all around so it looks like what they want it to look like. Or throw more money at it in hopes that’ll fix it.
Note that this vehicle was not just "a global warming satellite," whatever that is, it was the second attempt to launch, and the second failure of essentially the same mission, one that was supposed to definitively "take Earth's temperature," and "directly measure climate change."
That's a billion bucks (actually quite a bit more than just a thousand million, after all is said and done) on a mission sold as proof of "Global Warming"
Things that make you go, "Hmmmm."
Also a Taurus XL is, if I am not greatly mistake, an Orbital Sciences configuration, and part of the stack contracted, along with Space X, as one of two companies contracted to privately resupply ISS and eventually privatize manned spaceflight.
Orbital has a real track record of success, by the way, so I don't want to cast doubt on their abilities which have been proven in amazing ways, a legacy that includes the Pegasus.
There is no more baffling blindness among this president's supporters than among those who cheer his privatization of manned spaceflight. Those keen on the idea, which may eventually work out despite this administration's lack of regard - even hostility - for private enterprise or American Exceptionalism, have yet to explain this mutual contradiction.
What a boondoggle NASA is!
If globull warming is a lie, then more data will simply be the ammunition we need to finally disprove it.
“Besides monitoring particles in the atmosphere, it will also track solar radiation to determine the sun’s effect on climate change.”
Hmmmm, someone needs to learn about verb tenses.
This is the second AGW satellite that hasn’t made it to orbit. Two in row? I bet somebody’s been doin’ a little sabotaging around here!
In case you hadn't noticed, we already had plenty of data. And that data was altered with experiments such as these giving them an air of authenticity.
The study of climate is not a Constitutional function of the Federal government. Capeesh?
ML/NJ
http://www.orbital.com/SpaceLaunch/Taurus/
http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/Publications/Taurus_fact.pdf
NASA, punching holes in the ozone layer to find out why the ozone layer is getting smaller ping.
SpaceX has a real track record of success, too, once they worked out the bugs of getting to orbit.
You were the first to say it. I remembered the last failure as well. It is really strange that they have failed twice now to launch this ‘global warming’ satellite.
SpaceX could have probably launched 10 of those into orbit for $425,000,000
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.