NASA reports that Glory, a satellite to monitor aerosols failed to reach orbit, apparently from a fairing that didn’t release. See update below on the massive budget overruns for this failed project.
NASA’s announcement:
NASA’s Glory spacecraft launched aboard a Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Friday at 5:09:45 a.m. EST failed to reach orbit.
Telemetry indicated the fairing, the protective shell atop the Taurus XL rocket, did not separate as expected about three minutes after launch.
A press briefing to discuss the Glory launch failure is planned at Vandenberg for approximately 8:00 a.m. EST. NASA TV will carry the press conference live.
The new Earth-observing satellite was intended to improve our understanding of how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth’s climate.
Project management for Glory is the responsibility of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the launch service provider to Kennedy of the four-stage Taurus XL rocket and is also builder of the Glory satellite for Goddard.
h/t: Sera
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Thanks to Ric Werme for posting this story. See previous issues with this launch here
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory, another climate satellite, met a similar fate in February 2009 Bad week for hardware: Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite burns up
Do you think Murphy might be trying to tell NASA something. Like maybe “get back to basics”? – Anthony
UPDATE: Frank K in comments psted this:
<a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2008-03-25-nasaprojects_N.htm” rel=”nofollow”>Major NASA projects over budget</a>
WASHINGTON — Two-thirds of NASA’s major new programs are significantly over budget or behind schedule, according to the agency’s latest report to Congress.
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Hard choices also will have to be made to make up for the skyrocketing cost of the Glory satellite, which is 31% over budget. Under the 2005 law, NASA can’t spend any money on the project after the summer of 2009 without congressional approval — a requirement that could be moot if NASA launches Glory as planned in April 2009.
To make up for the extra $274 million that Glory and the other three programs will cost, NASA could reduce pre-flight testing, strip planned scientific sensors from over-budget spacecraft and scale back operations of older space missions, Maizel says.
The overruns “all the more put a crimp in NASA’s budget,” which is too small for the agency “to do everything it’s trying to do,” says Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
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I am now a conspiracy theorist. 2009 and 2011.
“Ric Werme says:
March 4, 2011 at 5:48 am”
Then we have a trend, ok. Sports I care not for, it’s all BS IMO. And people need to diverge from that crap! Shame most other lauches, like TV and surveillance, are ok. Find out where the “magic co2” goes, seems to be a problem.
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.
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…
from: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_%20Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdf
Earth and Climate Science 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Earth Science (Millions) $1802 $1945 $2090 $2217 $2282
Increases by $382 million over FY 2010 enacted, and $1.8 billion over 4-years (FY 2011-14) compared to the FY 2010 Budget;
Re-flies the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which is critical to our understanding of t
Earth’s carbon cycle and its effect on climate change;
Accelerates the development of new satellites to enhance observations of the climate and other Earth systems;
Expands and accelerates Venture-class competitive PI-led missions;
Enhances climate change modeling capabilities to enhance forecasts of regional and other effects;
Operates 15 Earth-observing spacecraft in orbit and launches Glory, NPP, and Aquarius; and
Proceeds toward completion and launch of remaining foundational missions: LDCM (6/13) and GPM (7/13).
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.
Strange failure, and it is not the first with a climatological satellite.
It makes me wonder…
Anthropogenical bad luck, maybe?
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
Lemme guess…CAGW caused the atmosphere to expand resulting in increased drag on the satellite, which is why the overheated faring failed to separate, right?
/sarc 🙂
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?
Oh Mr.Putin could you also, kinda, would ya help us get a weather satellite into orbit as well???
I think there are people in NASA who are secretly very relieved that this satellite and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed.
Now they can fall back on their models.
I came across this related tidbit from USA Today circa 2008…
Major NASA projects over budget
WASHINGTON — Two-thirds of NASA’s major new programs are significantly over budget or behind schedule, according to the agency’s latest report to Congress.
.
.
.
Hard choices also will have to be made to make up for the skyrocketing cost of the Glory satellite, which is 31% over budget. Under the 2005 law, NASA can’t spend any money on the project after the summer of 2009 without congressional approval — a requirement that could be moot if NASA launches Glory as planned in April 2009.
To make up for the extra $274 million that Glory and the other three programs will cost, NASA could reduce pre-flight testing, strip planned scientific sensors from over-budget spacecraft and scale back operations of older space missions, Maizel says.
The overruns “all the more put a crimp in NASA’s budget,” which is too small for the agency “to do everything it’s trying to do,” says Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
I guess I don’t get why anyone would be cheering the failure of this launch.
Everyone I know predicted this satellite would not launch, just like they predicted the failure of the last one about 2 years ago. And just like the last failure they suspected it was due to Big Green somehow not wanting the world to know the ACC truth. I realize this is just the usual conspiracy lunacy but somehow I can’t help being sucked into it this time around. I’ll fight it off.
“”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.””
This is what happens when you change your mission from manned space flight to muslim outreach and studying dirt in the earth’s atmosphere. It also doesn’t help to name a space craft with such a lowly mission as studying dirt a high sounding name such Glory.
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.
J Gary Fox :
All that is interesting only if there is some reason to know it. There is no reason that I can think of why we would ever need to know it.
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.
So then ,if Schmidt is right, then why all the failures? Sounds like they need some:
“Steely-eyed Rocket men.” rather than “Watery eyed Warmmen “….
My experience with hardware testing is military, not NASA, but let me assure those who wonder about whether the fairing release was checked out prior to launch, that it almost certainly was. My guess would be that a lengthy check list was run through including such things as disconnecting the electrical cable, plugging in some sort of fairing release simulator, and verifying that an activation signal was sent at the proper time and only at the proper time. They probably checked it especially carefully because of the previous launch failure.
The problem is that even simple devices can fail and even well thought out, and verified check lists can have errors. If processes couldn’t fail, automobiles would never require recalls. There’s a reason that test pilots can’t get life insurance.
So, why did the vehicle crash? I’ll be really surprised if there isn’t a large room full of very bright people working long hours — very likely without overtime — on that very question.
It is OK, do not cry, the launch was a failure, the cubesats are now on the bottom of the ocean. Do not despair. There is a Cubesat Forum (see the link) that help you to build new ones. Success!
http://cubesats.wikidot.com
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.
Conspiracy and Sarcasm ?
The satellite is probably insured and can be rebuilt. Think of all the repeat jobs!
Failures like this provide continued job security and ongoing profits for everyone involved.
When a launch is successful, some jobs are permanently over.
Having it fail, keeps the payroll rolling on.. milk it as long as you can !!
It’s easy to create a slight defect that is not easily detectable. The best part for the perpetrators is that all evidence is destroyed in the ensuing burnup/crash.
Has the world really gotten this selfish?
Considering the state of some people’s morals these days, unfortunately I’d believe any scam is possible.
I know I could design a defect into a device so I could keep my job longer…
however, I would have money in my wallet, but no peace in my soul.
I really hope this was not intentional….
But even still, a careless repeat of this defect is inexcusable.
Fortunately is still see integrity, honesty,and values alive and well at this sincere meeting point, WUWT.