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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It is likely that what ‘Chris R’ was alluding to was the New Age Math that was used under the regime of Slick Willie Clinton. You may remember that the term cuts was not used to address a decrease in spending from year to year, instead they applied the description to reductions in projected growth! If one year’s welfare spending was 100 billion, and projected the next for 120 billion, but altered to 110 billion, the socialist liberals screamed ‘ THAT’S A CUT!’ The children will starve!
He probably had the year wrong though as Clinton had a majority socialist Congress until January 1995. I remember the new (R) Congress fighting for and eventually succeeding in balancing the budget, this was done by literally dragging the pervert-in-chief off of Monica Lewinsky while he protested: ‘I’ll balance the budget in 5 years, 10 years, 8 years…” What I remember is NASA budgets (along with many others) were frozen at current spending levels which in a socialist mind, is a cut.
Also, taking the first Wikipedia number: 7,591 $Billions/year actually means 7.591 Trillion. If those are actually commas then they are $Millions/year. If they were supposed to be decimal points, $Billions/year is correct. Wikipedia fails again (unless they are using some foreign convention inverting commas and decimals, but that makes no sense in an article about USA budgets).
That little {self-snip} said this? Do we need any further proof that he holds the taxpayer in contempt? Well, for this taxpayer the feeling is completely mutual. Time to up the ante folks, our money is on the line here. Contact your congress-person, name these people by names: Gavin, Hansen, Serreze, etc. Recommend that they be fired and their projects be eliminated. If they need funds they can have a bake sale.
I’m too tired to look, but I wonder just how much that flying hunk of junk ISS has cost us in total? With a time machine is there anyone who wouldn’t go back and scrub that idea? Zero that funding and all the climate crap, and NASA would have all the money it needed to pursue a fruitful space agenda.
Just how many short-lived climate gathering instruments do we need up there anyway? I would much rather they have been Pioneers or Voyagers instead. Are we improving our weather forecasting with all these birds or are we just handing toys over to the ecophobic propaganda mill? We have A-Trains of birds looking back here but one Hubble looking out. This is seriously getting out of control.
Well done NASA. Better stick to temperature measurement….Not
Great shame Glory failed so dismally to live up to its name!
We badly need good data to monitor climate and the Glory mission would have provided lots of stuff we need. Hope they can get the funding to go for another launch soon.
And Murphy was an optimist!
I’d say that Glory is now “shovel ready”
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?
Maybe Hansen homogenized the rocket’s software?
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 …
Can’t see the Glory in a suborbital mission huh? Glory has joined OCO in the “S” train.
Paying the pro’phe’t on a $316,000,000 rebuild.
As 1 of my patrons in my pub said:”it should do a great job of taking measurements from the depths of the pacific”.
Sell the info to ARGO perhaps??
Another ;site with a link to a good Washington Examiner article.
No problem.
Call the replacement mission Inglourious Basterd
Budget Authority ($M) FY 2009 ARRA FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013 FY 2014 FY 2015
Science 4,503.1 400.0 4,493.3 5,005.6 5,248.6 5,509.6 5,709.8 5,814.0
Earth Science 1,377.3 325.0 1,420.7 1,801.7 1,944.4 2,089.4 2,216.5 2,282.1
Space Operations 5,764.7 6,180.6 4,887.8 4,290.2 4,253.3 4,362.6 4,130.5
Cross‐Agency Support 3,306.4 50.0 3,095.1 3,111.4 3,189.6 3,276.8 3,366.5 3,462.2
Center Management and Operations 2,024.3 2,067.0 2,273.8 2,347.4 2,427.7 2,509.7 2,594.3
Bit more from the link kindly provided by ew-3
You can see the growth items, climate science & bureacracy is all we need in our brave new world.
NASA should drop all orbital contracts.