NASA'S Glory Satellite Fails To Reach Orbit

According to the BBC: “It is the exact same failure which befell Nasa’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) in 2009. It too launched on a Taurus XL rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and again the fairing failed to separate properly.”
It almost seems like someone doesn’t want better quality climate data.!

Convenient mishaps?

Some might smell a rat here. Rather convenient for it to fail when it was likely going to report a cooling planet.
Cheers! (Formerly INGSOC)

Can they blame CO2 for it? If they used a rocket that didn’t emit CO2 maybe it would have worked, since CO2 causes everything else http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
March 4, 2011 at 5:23 am
How hopeless are they, can’t even put a weather satellite into orbit LOL
What a waste of money, they should spend it on a probe to Europa, not this stupid project!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rightly said Scarlet, They can’t even put a weather satellite into orbit, while expecting us to believe what NASA’s Hansen prophecies on what the climate would be in a hundred year’s time. LOL.
NASA should be focusing on its riginal raison d’etre; space exploration.

It is more economical to gather data from actual models instead of gathering it for real.

I wonder is it anything to do with the atmosphere at that altitude being very cold and the fairing locking up, much like the way you put a flywheel onto a crankshaft.
This is a real shame. The only decent thing that ever came out of this whole climate change issue was the extra money spent on satellites and other observational equipment like ARGO (not forgetting WUWT, of course).
NASA needs to refocus its attention on space and space exploration, not climate change, and not Muslim outreach, SPACE.

I am sure glad their computer models are 100% accurate for the next 100 years of unknowable future. What would we do without such care.
I suggest they scrap the Muslims in space outreach program and use the money on launch vehicle improvements. NASA needs to stick to space exploration and give up on the rest. This is what happens when science gets political.

Probably all for the best. Less money is wasted by starving NASA of new data. They can’t waste money pencil whipping data to generate bogus ideological conclusions if they don’t have the data in the first place.
I’m ready to disband most of NASA and start over a bit at a time. The whole organization needs a cold reboot. Actually the same can be said for most U.S. government bureaucracies – they’re all bloated, unaccountable to the taxpayers, and generally out of control. Vote Tea Party now more than ever.

Designed to fail, I say.

Did Gavin write the launch software?

What a shame. Does anyone know how much money was wasted on this mission? Was it “stimulus” money? The same “stimulus” trough that NASA GISS has been feeding from?
I noticed this in the NASA press release:
“The fairing, which covers and protects the spacecraft during launch and ascent, underwent a redesign of its separation system after a similar failure two years ago. The new system has been successfully used on another Orbital launch vehicle several times.”
So this isn’t the first failure…nor will it be the last.
By the way, if you follow the link above to NASA GSFC, don’t click on any of the “education” links if you don’t want to increase your blood pressure! It’s infused to the max with global warming propaganda intended for our kids…

Buggs Bunny said it best, “Saab-bo-tadgee!”
Rather unimaginative to keep using the same method however.
Knowing how such disasters tend to draw attention to NASA’s activities, you’d think they would have double checked the seperation mechanisms before launch. The fact that this has happened again, makes me very suspicious of the watchers.

All kidding aside, this is a great loss to Solar and Earth Science.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/glory_irradiance.html#
“In 2003, a first generation TIM instrument went aloft with the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. Learning from that instrument, engineers have tweaked the optical and electrical sensors to make the Glory TIM even more capable of measuring the true solar brightness and its fluctuations.
“The Glory TIM should be three times more accurate than SORCE TIM, and about ten times more accurate than earlier instruments,” said Greg Kopp, a physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and leader of the TIM science team.”
The data from the SORCE satellite showed that the prior 30 years of satellite measurement of Total Solar Irradiance was way off the mark.
From Anthony’s Posting on 1/14/11
“The most probable value of total solar irradiance representative of solar minimum is 1360.8 ± 0.5 W m−2, lower than the canonical value of 1365.4 ± 1.3 W m−2 recommended a decade ago. This new value, measured by SORCE/TIM, is validated by irradiance comparisons to a NIST‐calibrated cryogenic radiometer in the new TSI Radiometer Facility. Uncorrected scattering and diffraction are shown to cause erroneously high readings in non‐TIM instruments.
That’s lower by 4.6 watts per square meter. This may mean that many climate models will have to be reinitialized if it is decided that this value they derive from SORCE is more accurate than the value established previously.”
What bothers me is that the many delays before launching were related to ensuring that all parts of Glory capsule were functioning perfectly. I would love to see the log of how many rechecks of the fairing protective shield was done.
Several decades of research and development by very talented people now lie in the Pacific Ocean.
Crude jokes are not appreciated by those who mourn this loss.
Video of launch with comments on failure as it occurs is available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12644800

I’m with several other posters – a convenient fail, perhaps? But really I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it will be interesting to know who is gonna pick up the bill for this? Nasa?

I guess I don’t get why anyone would be cheering the failure of this launch.

“”Working from space is hard, expensive and risky. We cannot take it for granted, and yet we need that information more than ever,” said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, commenting on the crash on the Real Climate website, “there is a huge hole building in the US contribution to Earth and Sun observing systems.””

R. Gates says:
March 4, 2011 at 6:16 am
Very unfortunate as this satellite could have answered some very important questions. Perhaps it’s time to look for commercial launch companies to take the roll of launching important research satellites.

NASA, once the global leader in SPACE exploration, now spends billions on global warming research (and muslim outreach). Maybe NASA, once the global leader in SPACE exploration, should focus less on global warming hysteria and muslim outreach and instead focus again on SPACE exploration.
Maybe those commercial companies should do the global warming research and muslim outreach. I’m sure they can figure out how to spin hysteria to make money. If NASA, once the global leader in SPACE exploration, can no longer effectively launch SPACE vehicles, should they be completely shut down?
/partial sarc
It’s outrageous that NASA has lost their edge in space exploration. Maybe de-funding GISS would help re-focus them on their core mission.

Sorry guys but I smell a big stinky rat here. This satelite was never going to see orbit. Call it a conspiracy theory, but its darn hard to hide cooling when you have such detailed data to fight. Over and over again the IPCC and others don’t want “real” reproduceable data and models to be in the hands of the average “citizen” scientist. Now BO will cut the budget, this thing will never see flight. On the other hand I did see that the super secret X-73 made it back into space.

I am keeping this post and comments in my Politics-2012 folder. I will be looking for that candidate for President who will stand for (and has already shown his/her chops about) …..1.NASA’s task is space only and they better start doing it right 2. American institutions and bureaucracy have room only for intelligent and successful workers; 3. All those who engage in propaganda efforts (pseudo-science) will be fined and given jail time. Fantasy is a wonderful thing.

Ok people. Let’s dump the conspiracy. theories. They are about as credible as NASA’s climate models.
Not sure NASA is ready to return to space. (Yes, I know they are there right now) What NASA needs is an in-depth quality program review. They need a truly strong quality system that guarentees key deliverables, not just more layers of documented bureaucracy. A cornerstone of quality systems is independent audits. We see how GISS hates being audited by outsiders. Could the same disfunction have spread to all of NASA?
This is costing the American taxpayer seriously big money and probably taxpayers in partner countries as well. Clearly, US taxpayers are not getting value for their dollars spent on climate research either on the ground or in orbit from NASA or any of the other main players in Climate Science. And, just for the record, I believe that the study of climate change is very important. The next ice age, the one certain prediction incidentally, will be very unpleasant for the US and extremely unpleasant for Canada and other northern countries.

Sic transit gloria NASAe 🙁

J Gary Fox says:
March 4, 2011 at 6:27 am
“Several decades of research and development by very talented people now lie in the Pacific Ocean.”
Huh? They certainly haven’t been building this thing since 1970! Maybe 40 man-years were lost. Ostensibly no R&D is required to replace it since they have all the schematics, software, and construction procedures documented. It’s only a matter of construction time & materials that were lost. Presumably the launch vehicle and payload were commercially insured like just about every other satellite so they don’t even have to beg congress for the funds to try again.

NASA likes to design critical systems with 3 redundant methods. So what we have here are multiple failures. Yet another disaster at NASA.
Another half billion dollars of money that we were forced to borrow at 3% tossed into the Sea. I’m mad. How about you?

Third Party says:
March 4, 2011 at 7:16 am
“Working from space is hard, expensive and risky. We cannot take it for granted, and yet we need that information more than ever,” said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, commenting on the crash on the Real Climate website, “there is a huge hole building in the US contribution to Earth and Sun observing systems.”
Translation – Forget the cost overruns, bloated budgets, and engineering failures! Gimme more money…I NEED MY GLORY DATA!!

“Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the launch service provider” !!
Private sector launch. Maybe launches should be via Russia or France, not private sector where profit comes before performance.

Hey, first off, do NOT confuse Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). GSFC is one of NASA’s major centers and has done good work. I work for a government contracting company, and I worked on NASA contracts at GSFC for many years, ending some 7 years ago.
As to R. Gates’ solution that “commercial launch companies be used”, just what the heck do you think Orbital Sciences is, sir? Orbital Sciences has developed some boost vehicles that are an alternative to such old reliables as the Delta II. I personally do not think much of them. Their first vehicle was the Pegasus, which was a rocket booster to be taken aloft under the wing of a modified B-52 and dropped at 40,000 feet. The booster would then ignite and go, up, up and away. It was designed to launch small payloads (some 400 kg) into low Earth orbit. The first one I worked on, in April 1990, was a success. A few other missions worked. But then they tried to launch the Pegasus XL. CONTRARY TO PREVIOUS NASA PRACTICE, this one was supposed to launch with NO PREVIOUS TESTS. Just–are you ready for this?–computer modelling tests done to verify that the Pegasus XL moter would work.
It didn’t–large expensive failure, that could have been prevented.
The old NASA started to die in 1992, when Dan Goldin took over as administrator. He kept demanding “faster, better, cheaper”, and he did not resist at all when Clinton cut his budget by 31%. THIRTY_ONE FREAKING PERCENT, no resistance. He announced that he was absolutely commited to making NASA a “more diverse” operation, and derided the old NASA as “male, pale, and stale”. (Here’s an idea chump–how about hiring people who could just do the job instead of worrying about quotas?) Behind his back, the NASA types derided him as “Captain Chaos”.
If you check it out, except for Challenger, the old NASA had many fewer failures than under the regimes that started with Dan Goldin.
I got out in 2004.

Dave Springer @ 8:32
Dave, Sorry but NASA does not insure satellites or boosters so we are out all those $$.
Since Orbital Sciences built both Glory and the Taurus XL, maybe they’ll pony up for a replacement (I’m not holding my breath). NASA should have used a Delta II.

My apologies for neglecting the /sarc tag after my first comment. When I first heard this news yesterday my initial reaction was more like:
vukcevic says:
March 4, 2011 at 9:11 am
“It is a great loss. Without good data there is no good science.”
I couldn’t agree more as setbacks like these delay data collection and cost a great deal of money – both scarce resources these days (data being scarce as what can be attained through FOI requests).

Did I say “yesterday”? I meant this morning – seems like yesterday.

tarpon says:
… Muslims in space…..
Wasn’t that a Muppet’s episode??
Europa mission is probably the single most important objective of mankind. I need to know if we are alone in the universe or not before I die!

Splish-Splash, Were all taking a bath. GK

Was this crash consistent with the model?
NASA fails to do the hard things again.

Well I fully remember how Project Vanguard, got Sputnicked, and became Project Rearguard instead. That was back around 1957 as I recall.
Do they still use explosive bolts to disconnect things; or was the protective fairing held on with Velcro.
I’m not sure I understand why they want to study aerosols in any case. How about studying clouds instead.
Well that’s a hell of a lot of money down the drain; far too much in my view; but then today we talk in trillions don’t we.
I believe the first Prototype Spitfire K5054, cost 50,000 pounds. Sometimes you get a good deal, and some times you get screwed.

Scarlet Pumpernickel, what makes you think the current incarnation of NASA would have any better luck with a Europa mission?

Since Obama mentioned it and given NASA’s progressive ineptitude, maybe one would think that this event should be a kind of inverse home-grown “sputnik moment” for America, showing what needs to be done by its by now unsurprising but still very impressive failure? But is the new “Reagan” anything like the real Reagan, or likewise only his home-grown progressive opposite, progressively regressing?
Intentionally comparing Obama to Reagan, big mistake in the real world, “brilliant” in the latte’ Commie Fantasyworld. Obama dredging up the “sputnik moment” especially while tasking NASA with prmarily helping to improve the esteem of Muslim Nations, likewise…and, well, just precious.

To: Theo Goodwin:
Orbital Sciences a practical monoply?! Check your circuits, sir, you are getting wrong answers. The Delta II is still available (95% success rate in over 300 launches). So is the Atlas V (22 successful launches). Granted, both of those a heavy lifters and may be overkill for boosting a satellite that’s only a little over 500 kilograms–but there is nothing that says this satellite had to be the only payload on board. I have seen missions deploy 5 separate satellites with no problems.

Why would they ever want a more accurate reading on a cooling globe?
Simple, [snip]. That’s what I think. ☺

Th science mag article on this is really strange http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/all-too-familiar-rocket-failure-.html?ref=hp Especially these 2 parts:
1) “”We’re trying to understand exactly how the sun varies so it won’t be a wildcard in the climate business. It’s a terrible loss; you don’t have many solar cycles in your lifetime.”
I thought the pro-AGW vanguard deny that the sun has any effect on climate, so what gives now?
2) “The information would have allowed identification of the type of aerosol—pollutant sulfate from smokestacks, sea salt from ocean surf, or soot from combustion, for example. That, in turn, would have allowed a better understanding of how most aerosols are countering part of global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space. Knowing how much aerosols are cooling the planet would help policymakers plan for the day when pollutant aerosols likely decrease as countries clean up their economies, exposing the world to the full brunt of greenhouse gases. ”
Are they claiming that as aerosol emissions are curbed or (heaven forbid) the plans of de-industrialization are realized, that AGW will get worse?
From whence come this madness?

If Obongo has his way, this will justify more exclusive focus on the Outreach to Islam mission. No failures there!

Not to worry, according to NASA’s models the Taurus XL launched successfully and Glory will soon be gathering data.

NASA
Needs Another Satellite Again….
Well the S does not stand for science and there is certainly no E for engineering, that S will not stand for space they way they are going on.
Maybe it should be renamed
Nutty Anthropogenic Story Assemblers…

I thought I read in one of the internet articles this morning, that there was a backup Glory sat and it was scheduled for launch in 2013.

You folks implying conspiracy are both making climate skeptics look like raving lunatics (thanks for that, BTW) and sadly missing the real problem at NASA.
YouTube search for “Bill Whittle: The Free Frontier” for the real cause of NASA’s total ineptitude.

Tree hugger’s disease strikes NASA yet again.

Gavin continues to marginalize and stereotype the readers and contributers here.
[Response: ……….then…. Leave that for the idiots at WUWT. – gavin]
[Reply: Gavin just has sour grapes about this and this.☺ ~dbs, mod.]

I sincerely hope that this is the last attempt to waste money on the grand boondoggle of AGW, but it won’t be.
I also darkly ponder another issue; NASA has been cooking the books in climate data sets, so what proof is there that we’d have seen actual data (rather than doctored data with an artificial bias) from these failed satellites, had they worked?
NASA destroyed their credibility with its climate shenanigans, so IMHO, questioning their trustworthiness regarding actual data is a valid premise.

In a public relations press release, NASA’s Dr. Hansen is attributing the nearly half-Billion dollar Glory’s rocket failure to Global Warming.

Inglorious American superior technology…
Geee, ask the French, the Russian, the Japanese, or even the Chinese… They got very reliable launcher.

Dan in California March 4, 2011 at 3:57 pm says:

Chris R. says: March 4, 2011 at 9:26 am
I work for a government contracting company, and I worked on NASA contracts at GSFC for many years, ending some 7 years ago.
The old NASA started to die in 1992, …Clinton cut his budget by 31%. THIRTY_ONE FREAKING PERCENT, no resistance.
————————————————-
Here are NASA annual budgets, in $Billions/year:
1987 7,591
1988 9,092 …
2007 15,861
2008 17,318

In a sense those numbers aren’t so bad. The cost of televisions, electronics and vehicles in the intervening years has tumbled relative to the rate of inflation. Moreover performance and reliability have increased remarkably.
In 1969, the cost of a Saturn V including launch was US $ 185 million (inflation adjusted US$ 1.11 billion in 2011).
Glory satellite alone valued at US$424 million. During the previous failed Taurus XL launch, the vehicle and services were estimated to have cost $54m.
As for the OCO mission

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory
The cost of the mission was US$280 million.
Three days after the failed February 2009 launch, the OCO science team sent NASA headquarters a proposal to build and launch an OCO “carbon copy”, which planned to have the replacement satellite launched by late 2011.[16] On February 1, 2010, the FY 2010 NASA budget request did include US$170 million for NASA to develop and fly a replacement for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

Gee whiz. I’m not quite sure what to say….
Is NASA’s contingency plan, a moved up de-orbit of the ISS? That ought to free up a few bucks for ‘Glory Science’. Next on the chopping block are the non-terrestrial planetary mission.
Looking up and dreaming of the stars has muxed into looking downward to prove the sky is falling.
I miss the Avro Arrow. The Apollo moon landings peaked too early. Misanthropy sucks.

J Gary Fox says: March 4, 2011 at 6:27 am
You must be joking. Right?
For the first time in my life, I feel good about being cynical.
I must pay envirofascista $100+/month in ‘Smart hydro meter’ Ontario to help develop increasingly unreliable wind blown service. I don’t give a fig about the $billions that NASA throws away.
Their hubris and vanity puts the smile on my face. It keeps me gloating at every misadventure.

GregO says:
March 4, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Can the conspiracy theories.
Launching a satellite into orbit is tough, full of risk, and far from a sure bet. Great efforts are made to economize. The failure of this mission is heartbreaking.
Can Hansen instead. What he intends for Humanity, assisted by and under the banner of NASA, and especially for anyone who objects to it, is a little worse than this heartbrake.

Isn’t it like that old saying from Richard III – for want of a nail? In this case, for want of a few good explosive bolts (or whatever they use to release a protective shell), a multi-billion dollar project goes down the tubes.
This is why I think everyone at NASA should take a small break from space for a while, de-stress, and figure out how to analyze, manage and perfect the small details again. It is striking out on the small details that have caused all of NASA’s failures in space missions. There is really NO margin for error when it comes to space flight, whether mechanical or manned.

GregO says:
“Launching a satellite into orbit is tough, full of risk, and far from a sure bet. Great efforts are made to economize. The failure of this mission is heartbreaking. ”
Two times the same error points in my view to having wrong priorities set. Those who ask NASA to focus on space are possibly pointing at the root cause Greg.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7254
If some of those mil$ used for GISS studying warming would have been used for the rocket this might have been avoided.

I was finished with NASA when The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) was canceled and it was around the time when “climate change pseudo-political-science of AGW” kicked in.
As an enthusiast in space exploration, science and astronomy, NASA and the European Space Agency have reached an all time low in my opinion, the majority of science being done seems to based around “Social Anthropology”, “political climate sciences” and all the other so called sciences that are evolved in the monitoring human activity.
All of which have nothing what so ever to do with space exploration the advancement of science or the well being of mankind, It has now become a pointless inward looking activity, very much involved with political agendas, intertwined with Neo-environmental and Social media stunts, It’s the control of Human Beings these programs are about, I’m calling it like it is!
It’s not very inspiring to see another satellite sent up there to monitor human emissions of one kind or another in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t give a sense of confidence these space programs either of the monetary cost or the amount of failure involved.
The whole scientific community seems to be wrapped around information and technology, sitting around playing with models and their expensive super-computers, accumulating thousands of years of data and to be recognized for their peer-reviewed interpretation and who can not be criticized because of how intelligent and important they are (woop de fricken doo).
There must be a lot of frustrated scientists, Astronomers and engineers in these dark days of the anthropological era of doom, and the forecast of the continued rise of this idiosyncratic society is mirrored by the cost and failure of it’s ventures.
Young minds today are more inspired by the belief in Aliens and cover up conspiracy’s, Why? because we are not out there exploring the real universe, pushing the boundary’s, they are not involved with the experiences of those who could be in space or discovering what really is out there, instead (sigh…), they are asked to count contrails and blow bubbles, that’s right! exciting times folks.
————————————————————————————-

Well done NASA. Better stick to temperature measurement….Not

And Murphy was an optimist!

I’m still having a hard time understanding what goes into a $424,000,000 satellite ?
Would really like to see an itemized budget. How much for parts ? How much for assembly? How much for test ? I know this stuff is expensive, but $424M for an unmanned satellite?

Great delight Glory succeeded so aptly to live up to its name!
The public face of Glory Mission Science was inflated to obscene levels of vain righteousness. The karma of its demise is breathtaking.
(and Yes, I noticed the potential irony. What goes around comes around and goes around again.)
Quoting …

J Gary Fox: Crude jokes are not appreciated by those who mourn this loss.

Can’t see the Glory in a suborbital mission huh? Glory has joined OCO in the “S” train.

As 1 of my patrons in my pub said:”it should do a great job of taking measurements from the depths of the pacific”.
Sell the info to ARGO perhaps??

Tenuc says: Great shame Glory failed so dismally to live up to its name!

No problem.
Call the replacement mission Inglourious Basterd

NASA should drop all orbital contracts.