Satellite to Study Global-Warming Gases Lost in Space
By Alex Morales, Bloomberg News
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — A satellite launched from California failed to reach orbit today, crashing into the sea near Antarctica and dooming a $273 million mission to study global-warming gases.
“The mission is lost,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Steve Cole said in a telephone interview from the launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The NASA satellite was to orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth and observe how carbon dioxide enters and leaves the atmosphere, helping scientists predict future increases in the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. Instead, the satellite fell in the ocean near Antarctica though the mission manager said at no point did the craft pass over land.
“It’s a huge disappointment for the entire team who have worked very hard for years and years and years,” NASA Launch Director Chuck Dovale said in a briefing from California. “Even when you do your very best, you can still fail.”
Today’s malfunction follows a Feb. 11 collision of U.S. and Russian satellites almost 500 miles above the planet, the first crash of its type, which created a space debris field of more than 300 pieces that could damage other satellites.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite didn’t reach orbit after a 1:55 a.m. launch because the “payload fairing” failed to separate, NASA said. The fairing covers the top of the satellite during launch and needs to come off so the satellite can detach from the rocket and enter orbit.
“It’s disappointing because it was giving us novel information to help us move our understanding forward on global warming,” Alan O’Neill, science director of the Reading, U.K.- based Centre for Earth Observation, said in an interview.
Orbital Sciences
Both the satellite and launch rocket were built by Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. John Brunschwyler, Orbital Sciences’s mission manager, said “over the past 10 years, we’ve flown a nearly perfect record — 56 out of 57 vehicles and we’ve not had any problems with this particular fairing design.”
NASA’s investment was $273 million for the design, development and launch operations. Insurance details on the mission may be given later today, NASA said.
The craft contained a monitoring device designed to collect 8 million measurements every 16 days. Scientists hoped to use the data to find out how much CO2 is absorbed by the forests, grasslands and oceans, which are collectively known as “sinks.”
Man-made CO2, which traps heat in the atmosphere, is largely produced by power plants, vehicle engines and factories.
The data gleaned from the satellite was intended to help guide government global-warming policy, NASA said.
Understanding ‘Carbon Sinks’
“An improved understanding of carbon sinks is essential to predicting future carbon-dioxide increases and making accurate predictions of carbon dioxide’s impact on Earth’s climate,” NASA said on the mission Web site. “If these natural carbon-dioxide sinks become less efficient as the climate changes, the rate of buildup of carbon dioxide would increase.”
On Jan. 23, Japan launched what it said was the world’s first satellite, Gosat, to measure greenhouse gases from 56,000 points around the globe over five years.
Today’s satellite was expected to have a minimum three-year life. Similar spacecraft have lasted five to 10 years, David Steitz, a NASA spokesman, said yesterday.
While launch and separation of the rocket’s first stage went as planned, a clamshell-shaped “fairing” covering the satellite failed to open, meaning it was too heavy to reach orbit, Brunschwyler said on NASA’s online television station.
“As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not reach orbit,” Brunschwyler said. Indications are the satellite “landed just short of Antarctica, in the ocean.”
Earlier this month, the collision of Russian and U.S. satellites destroyed an Iridium Satellite LLC communications craft and a defunct Russian Cosmos 2251, NASA said.
At least 18,000 satellites, debris and other space objects orbiting the Earth are tracked by the U.S. Joint Space Operations center. The Soviet Union put the first satellite, Sputnik 1, into space in 1957.
h/t to Gary and Steve
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I wonder just what it would have told us?
Certainly not that human contribution to CO2 is miniscule compared to the huge amount naturally present in the atmosphere.
It may have confirmed two studies from 2000 and 2005 which indicated the greatest source of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 is from Third World home fires. The study released in 2000 noted that a high source was the Indonesian peat fires in addition to home fires in Africa. The 2005 study noted a concentration in rural China.
I am disappointed in the loss of the mission as it would have provided empirical evidence of the real sources of CO2 rather than having to suffer though Hansen and Mann computer models presented as data.
The really annoying thing is now were going to have to suffer another few years of ramped up uncensored Hansen alarmism so that NASA can justify another one going up.
At first I laughed but you are right. Raw Data is always good. I used to despise databases that fudged your data to conserve space … pi, mops, industrial sql … even when data storage was becoming cheap.
So on that note I guess we’ll have to do more modeling in the absense of science. Ugh 🙁
“help us move our understanding forward on global warming” ??
What’s there more to know? The science is sorted, remember?
Anything the scientists wanted it to.
Justified or not, this global warming thing has done a lot of harm to science, scientists and people proclaimed as experts. This fiasco will not quickly be forgotten by the general public who have been made to feel guilty for all of the wo’s of the world.
Bummer – too bad about the satellite. I reckon Mann et al will have to get busy and “interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope” to create the data that the satellite would have provided.
This is tragic. I sure hope they had a backup!
Now, if I were ACTUALLY a conspiracy theorist… I’d suggest that they blew it up to prevent us from learning the truth…. However, I’m not. This is a major setback. Personally, I was looking forward to seeing the CO2 cycle being exposed in the same way that Argo bouys have demonstrated that the ocean is not heating up in some catastrophic manner.
A bad week, indeed.
mmm Conspiracy? or Inconvenient Truth? Or maybe very convenient since they will base the green policies on pass data, like, let’s say 2007!!!
The Japanese satellite is ok
http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/index_e.html
It will also measure greenhouse gases.
Will the Jaanese satellite measure water vapor too since water is the most potent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere? No, wait… we call those “weather satellites”.
Anna V., thank you for posting that link. I had not read about that prior to this thread.
JimB
273 million for this project.Just think what the tax payer could have done with 273 MILLION to help in this recession the democrat’s brought on.Now before you say that was caused by President Bush remember, because the liberal media will never tell you this, the DEMOCRAT’S have been in control of congress since 2006 and they were the ones that said nothing was wrong with fannie and freddy .Go check you tube and look at the c- span .
Save your political rants for RedState.
This website is best served by dispassionate scientific study.
Psst… terry46… we’re not supposed to notice the long hours and hard work they put into trashing the economy… it’s not PC to point out the obvious… much easier and lazier to just Blame Bush and continue the meme that he was the worst President ever… I swear, some of these people would have all the world’s firstborn killed if they thought it would advance their agendas…
Let’s see – fund one Air Force 1 trip for Obama, rebuild one school, and give everyone 15 cents.
Alternatively, it employed a whole lot of skilled engineers and technicians in hundreds of companies, and the goods and services THOSE people bought while ALSO paying their payroll taxes were spread out among tens of thousands of people and shops and suppliers.
On the whole, I’d rather see the money go to even a failed satellite shot (which will have been insured, BTW, so there’s essentially no loss other than time) than be passed to the black hole that’s Congress’s handling of the money supply any more…
You need to look up Bastiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy”.
Additionally, the fact that the satellite was insured does not mean that no money was lost. It just means that the insurer, and by indirection all the people who buy insurance are out that money, instead of the taxpayers. (On the other hand, the two populations are almost identical.)
Terry
[snip]
Too bad. Actual data is always a Good Thing.
Actual data are a good thing, but would we have seen actual data. I expect we would have seen data after a few adjustments for this and that (and the other).
I don’t like to presume that people are going to fiddle with the data until it actually happens, and I don’t think it serves the purpose of this site to do so. We should presume that scientists will act like scientists until proven otherwise, not the reverse. Some of the groups responsible for other climate-related satellite data have been very responsive to issues with their data.
Tom,
I’d like to make the same presumption. However, recent history makes that very difficult.
I don’t know if this ultimately is a good thing or a bad thing to have happened. Of course, any additional data on fluxes is a good thing, but CO2 is so politicized that it would have been used first to advance the AGW agenda and then later to understand climate better. $273M is (well, used to be) a heft chunk of change and to get nothing for it is a shame. The models will just have to continue running on approximated data…
If you want to predict future CO2 levels in the atmosphere, you can do this with a ruler and a Mauna Loa CO2 graph. It is cheaper and more accurate than the poor calculations which brought down the satellite.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7907570.stm
“Our whole team, at a very personal level, is very disappointed in the events of this morning.”
He added: “The fairing has considerable weight relative to the portion of the vehicle that’s flying. So when it separates off, you get a jump in acceleration. We did not have that jump in acceleration.
“As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not make orbit.”
The primary mission of the satellite was not to predict future CO2 levels at Mauna Loa, it was to study the carbon cycle over the entire world.
Poor calculations (vis-a-vis fuel requirements) didn’t bring down the satellite, the failure to eject the fairing once above the atmosphere was the culprit. There’s little point in taking the fairing into orbit, as it would just add to the space debris already there and cost a lot of extra fuel, rocket size, etc.
Mary Hinge,
The early news stories this morning did not describe the failure mechanism, and I misinterpreted the quote. My bad. You happy?
Ric,
Regardless of what the stated mission of the satellite was, you can make an accurate projection of future CO2 levels from the Mauna Loa data.
It was not poor calculations that brought down the satellite. It was the failure of the heat shield to seperate when it was supposed to. As a result the satellite was too heavy for the final stage to lift into orbit.
It’s obvious why it crashed, it didn’t have the power to burst through all that nasty, heavy, clagging carbon dioxide. If only it had never been built, just that small reduction in atmospheric CO2 would have been enough to allow it to fly.
Glad to see SG as accurate as ever
Glad to see you’re back MHinge – is it tough going being right all the time?
Steve, am I happy the satellite launched failed?…definately not.
Am I surprised you didn’t double check the facts before jumping to what is a quite ridiculous conclusion?…definately not.
Since the science isn’t actually settled, we should all recognize the seriousness of this loss before we start the snarky comments about NASA’s lack of can-do.
It’s possible this satellite might have told us more about the carbon cycle — where atmospheric CO2 really comes from and where it actually goes.
From the description of what the OCO was supposed to do, I think it may have given us better measurements of the actual levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. I have always considered it ridiculous that we measure CO2 only at Mauna Loa and use that measurement as a global number.
I fully agree. Given the massive policy decisions being made, the cost of obtaining more data to improve the robustness of the economic decisions required is really a no brainer.
What I found quite interesting though, is the admission that they’re not sure where 30% of man-made CO2 is going. Whether their models account for this 30%, or assume that the production to absorption is linear I’d love to know. Anyone?
John Galt.. Who are you?
Note the quote in the article “giving us novel information to help us move our understanding forward on global warming,” Alan O’Neill,”
Not ‘understanding of the earth’s climate’, but specifically ‘global warming’. Playing to his audience? Or an agenda? Dunno, but an interesting choice of words.
-b
Who is John Galt?
We don’t measure it only at Mauna Loa: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html
Who is John Galt? He is the hero of the Ayn Rand novel, Atlas Shrugged, who more or less disengaged from a society in disarray.
Sorry John. I have an email friend who has retired to Galt’s Gulch.
The tragedy of the failed orbit is that the data will be denied to climatologists such as Dr. William Gray and Dr. Roy Spencer.
It’s a conspiracy! It was shot down by Al Gore’s black helicopter to keep us from the truth! ::: inseert X-Files music here :::
“Man-made CO2, which traps heat in the atmosphere, is largely produced by power plants, vehicle engines and factories.”
… and rockets. 😉
Are you sure?
Although, no question that the industry responsible for creating something as advanced as a rocket (ie. mining, foundries, fabrication, transport) has emitted almost uncountable tons of CO2… but hey, we’ll just let that go.
The actual rocket isn’t much of a CO2 emitter… then again, during the “Energy Crisis” of the 70s they shortened the Indy 500… as if the amount of fuel used by the racers was not massively dwarfed by the fuel used for the teams and fans to get to the track in the first place…
Logic is not the strong point for alarmists…
There’s the problem, they rationed the fuel to avid excess emissions.
Does anyone know what the missions of the two satellites which collided last week were?
Iridium – communications satellite, the other was a defunct Soviet era satellite.
One was a defunct Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, the other was an operational Iridium satellite. Iridium handles satellite phones and is the source of “Iridium flairs” you may have noticed in the evening sky.
The collision was almost at right angles, so a huge amount of energy was involved, collision speed of 20,000 mph or so.
See http://www.heavens-above.com/ for more on all that plus ISS passes, Comet Lulin, and lotsa other neat stuff.
Kosmos 2251 crashed into Iridium 33 approximately 800 km over northern Siberia.
Kosmos 2251 (sometimes spelled Cosmos) was a Russian Strela-2M communications satellite.
Iridium 33 was a U.S. Iridium communications satellite.
More at http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/collidingsatellites.htm with maps of the debris at http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=21&month=02&year=2009
Another of the many great reasons to build the space elevator.
That’s what they want you to think. /conspiracy theory on
I thought these rockets used liquified hydrogen and oxygen?
Some use hydrogen and oxygen, others use kerosene, and some use more exotic stuff. The Shuttle burns hydrogen (that was a hydrogen tank that blew up) but it’s boosters burn ammonium perchlorate and aluminum and make a pretty light tan smoke trail.
Don’t know what kind of rocket they used for this launch. Bummer at any rate.
As opposed to the non-man-made CO2 which doesn’t trap heat and is largely produced by non-evil things?
Of course they couldn’t have left off the “man-made” because then it couldn’t have been followed by “is largely produced by power plants, vehicle engines and factories” It would have had to say: “CO2, which traps heat in the atmosphere, is largely produced by the environment.
G
Only “Man-made CO2” traps heat in the atmosphere? hmmm…
It seems odd that there are still those who say the ‘science is settled’ when they launched a spacecraft designed to operate for many years trying to gather new data so that some additional science could be brought to bear on some of the remaining unanswered questions.
It sure sounds like we lost a significant opportunity in data collection capability…
Jim, I like your comment. It is very simple and logical. If the science is settled then why do we need more data. Yesterday in Mechanics Illustrated there was an article about the satellite. I have include a paragraph below where a particulat statement caught my eye.
“Only 40 percent of the carbon humans have emitted since 1750—a whopping 466 billion tons—remains in the atmosphere. The destination of the remaining 60 percent CO2 vexes atmospheric researchers. “We can’t figure out exactly where it’s going,” says Mike Miller, vice president of science and technology satellite programs for Orbital Sciences, which built the observatory. The missing portion presumably has been absorbed by carbon sinks, Miller says—oceans and land-based vegetation that sequester, or take in, carbon from the atmosphere. “It’s the way the Earth breathes,” Millers says. About half of the missing carbon has been traced to the oceans, but scientists have an incomplete understanding of how land sequesters the other half. If the observatory can locate the missing carbon sinks, he says, it could not only help climate modelers more accurately predict how fast the Earth will warm, but it would indicate which natural areas are in need of the greatest protection.”
The sentence towards the end “it could not only help climate modelers more accurately predict how fast the Earth will warm” tells me that this is an admission that they have to really twist the parameters to get the models to predict reasonably because something is out of balance. If something is lost then they have to compensate with an artificial compensation. This is an admission to what I believe most informed modellers (and that includes those outside the climate modelling circle) believe that all the physics are not accounted for and there is a lot of analytical guestimation and simplification of complex systems.
I would rather have seen the 273 million be devoted to developing one climate model from scratch and have it done to standards that are used in other industries. Making predictions from ensembles of models like has been done just shows that none of them work.
Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. I feel better now.
I’d like to see the money spent on natural global warming research. If we fund both sides of the issue, I’ll bet we see less support among researchers for the AGW banner.
So, 40% of the CO2 we’ve put into the atmosphere is persistent for 250 years is it? Is there something particularly sticky about “man-made” CO2 we don’t know about? The whole statement from whomever reeks of garbage science.
We don’t have to know EVERYTHING about our climate know that, in all probability, human activity is mostly responsible for recent warming. We can at the same time know this to be true, and yet still be searching for answers about climate change. This is especially true, given that most arguments against anthropogenic global warming are the result of a misunderstanding of the very basics of how our climate system works.
I’m not sure why it has to be that the scientists are “compensating with an artificial compensation”. We know how much is emitted and how much is in the atmosphere. Is it not sensible to assume that the most probable carbon sinks are absorbing the missing CO2?
I second John Galt.
Natural climate change is far more interesting & causes more variation than we ever could.
It would be really good if we could predict what is really going to happen or at least make a reasonable guess.
We know we can’t control it but it’s best we prepare for the right thing, either way, hot or cold.
DaveE.
Reasic (12:24:09) :
Really? Interesting hypothesis. How do you know this?
/Mr Lynn
The cynic in me would be concerned that it would report biased data. The story seems to be the usual foregone conclusion – particularly the part about “the data being gleaned from the satellite was intended to help guide government global-warming policy”, and the paragraph that follows that assumes the default AGW scenario. While hopefully the data acquisition algorithms (gawd, how that word has changed!) were free of skew, how would we know?
This is the legacy of Hansen, Mann et al. Millions to acquire to data with little confidence in it.
Paul,
Your statement is right on.
markm
Yes, really a sad moment there for science… I suppose there were a lot of sensors on that guy, so he could have brought loads of info…
I noticed some people are complaining about the cost… $273 millions can you imagine how much every American paid for this?
Oh, 90 cents really? Ok…
Flanagan,
That is 90 cents on top of the $3,000/capita from last week’s “stimulus” package. Isn’t it fun spending other people’s money?
Schoolteachers should explain to children that society is stealing trillions of dollars from their future, in order to pretend to be protecting them from an increase of 0.00005 in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Steven,
Could you explain this calculation for me? My understanding is that CO2 has increased from about 284 ppm to 384 ppm, which would be more like a 35% increase.
Reasic,
50ppm is 0.00005. If the US ceased to emit any CO2, the impact would be less than that over the next century.
Ah, so you’re not comparing apples to apples… got it. You’re comparing the carbon dioxide versus the entire atmosphere, because it looks so much smaller that way! GOSH! How could such a small thing make such a big impact! /sarcasm
“Ah, so you’re not comparing apples to apples… got it. You’re comparing the carbon dioxide versus the entire atmosphere, because it looks so much smaller that way! GOSH! How could such a small thing make such a big impact! /sarcasm”
Not as though the actual increase calculated from CO2 & the ‘projected’ increase bears any relationship.
Disputed feedbacks come to mind anyone?
DaveE.
I’m confused. What would this satellite have done that the AIRS instrument on board the Aqua satellite is not already doing? See http://www-airs.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/overview/. What has the AIRS data told us? Al Gore used AIRS CO2 imagery to prove a point in his recent presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The AIRS gives the CO snapshots at the lowest of 5000meters. The new satellites, the destroyed one and the GOSAT of Japan that was launched in January successfully, would be reporting on the ground CO2.
As Beck has shown, there are large variations in the measurements of ground level CO2, much larger than the sanitized versions of Mauna Loa and company.
I really wonder what the impact of this satellite would have been had the launch been a success. I wonder if the data would have been liberating or manipulated to toe the line on AGW. I guess there’s not much of a point in spending to much energy pondering this further!
A sad day for the OCO mission. The data loss will be deeply felt.
Also a sad day for OSC’s Taurus XL with its 75% track record. The failure was attributed to lack of payload fairing detachment though which could have any number of reasons.
If they don’t know what forests, grasslands, and oceans are doing then how are they predicting what they’re going to do? What data are they putting in their models if they don’t know how forests, grasslands, and oceans behave?
My understanding is that they have to “correct” the co2 data at Mauna Loa when the wind blows air up from the woods and fields below.
That’s a shame. Am I correct in thinking that the CO2/C/O2 cycle is poorely understood quantitatively. This would have help nail it down. Does anyone ahve any links?
“helping scientists predict future increases in the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. ”
But they said it was supposed to measure CO2 not water vapor ?
Maybe they should have bought more carbon offsets.
Yes, Fred. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Water vapor is a feedback.
Reasic – you’re only half right. Additional C O 2 warms the atmosphere slightly, allowing it to hold more water vapor which in turn warms the atmosphere more, making it a positive feedback of the additional C O 2 (IPCC). However, water vapor is a so-called greenhouse gas in its own right and is the most potent of the greenhouse gases, accounting for around 70% (I believe that’s the correct per centage) of the normal greenhouse effect on earth.
Water vapor is a feedback? How do you arrive at that conclusion?
Said Reasic:
“Yes, Fred. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Water vapor is a feedback.”
According to Working Group 1 of the IPCC, the total greenhouse effect is 324 watts/meter^2. It’s in the cartoon from Trenberth and Kiehl, showing the earth-atmosphere radiation budget.
According to the same people, this greenhouse effect warms the earth by 33 C (59F). (Commonly cited in textbooks.)
And, according to the same people, the” total radiative forcing” (their term) due to ALL manmade greenhouse gas is 1.6 watts/meter^2. That’s a whole lot less than 324 W/M^2. Using the proportionality of 324W/M^2 to 33 deg C, that total manmade greenhouse gas is responsible for 0.16 C (0.3 F).
So I don’t understand how 1.6 W/M^2 of manmade warming is due to the “main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming” and 322.4 W/M^2 due to the natural greenhouse effect (which includes a tiny amount of natural CO2) is “feedback.”
Would Reasic please explain how a flea on the tail wags the dog? A reference would be much appreciated.
Richard Savage
“According to Working Group 1 of the IPCC, the total greenhouse effect is 324 watts/meter^2. It’s in the cartoon from Trenberth and Kiehl, showing the earth-atmosphere radiation budget.”
That isn’t the greenhouse effect, that’s backradiation which in large part would exist with or without a greenhouse effect.
re: “the satellite “landed just short of Antarctica”
I can see the ironic headline, “CRASHING CO2 SATELLITE MELTS ANTARCTIC ICE”
Even funnier…”Doomed Global Warming Satellite Crashes in Record High Antarctic Ice”
par⋅a⋅dox
/ˈpærəˌdɒks/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [par-uh-doks] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.
LOL
Whoops – put my comment in the wrong place – sorry!
How much more money are we going to keep wasting on this grossly exagerated hoax… man made global warming.
Enough is enough.
Bad karma, that’s all. That’s what happens when you blame the wrong thing for the earth’s environmental woes. It comes back and bites you. 🙂
the conspiracist in me says they blew it up themselves because they know it would prove their figures were lying, and thereby stop nasa getting its money from the government.
the realist says it is a blow, to have the facts dashed out of our hands.. that we need some proof, that we are right. of course even if it was in orbit (i dont know the sensors), but it wouldnt sample the entire planet of c02, or global warming. if it was global warming with this new set of sensors, dedicated to this data gathering.. then it could only say its right from here to here..
(and the comment about insurance, it means insurance companies will have to pay out, which means the agencies ned to make that money back either by scking staff, or increasing polices..)
The counter to that of course is that Exxon had it blown up because it would have revealed the truth…
Sometimes fate has a way of helping. If this satellite had been used in any way to bolster the case for AGW, it’s probably better that it burned up.
“It’s disappointing because it was giving us novel information to help us move our understanding forward on global warming,” Alan O’Neill, science director of the Reading, U.K.- based Centre for Earth Observation, said in an interview.
The rocket’s stated mission was thus in the service of AGW pseudoscience and not science. It would have been one step forward for AGW, and one giant step backward for science, and for all mankind. Good riddance, I say.
It may have been ‘karma’. The potential data could have been mis-used, would have, just look at what is done with other data. However, having data is better than not having it. The satellite would have been asking the atmosphere; “What is going on here with CO2 ?” We should never be afraid of asking a question for fear that we will not like the answer.
Besides, without the ‘intent’ to prove severe anthropogenic climate change do you think the mission would have been funded?