No Glory at NASA Today

An Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket loaded with an Earth-monitoring satellite crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean just six minutes after launching from Vandenberg AFB this morning.

The mission was equipped with two science instruments, one trained on observations of aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere and the other to track the sun’s irradiance. By improving scientific understanding of the impact of solar radiation and role of tiny particles in the atmosphere the Glory mission would have helped to improve our understanding of climate.

The mishap occurred when a covering protecting the satellite payload during launch didn’t separate properly. The rocket then lost velocity and failed to reach orbit.

Two years ago, a similar project — to launch an orbiting carbon observatory to measure where carbon dioxide is being emitted and where it is being captured — met with a similar post-launch fate after the rocket’s fairing failed to separate. That satellite crashed just off the coast of Antarctica after failing to reach orbit.

With this latest climate satellite crash, NASA is down two critical observation tools that would rapidly improve near-Earth observation. In addition to losing over half a billion dollars in research equipment tied up in the two satellites, we are all losing another opportunity to better understand how Earth’s climate is changing.

Shortly after the accident, NASA announced the formation of the Glory Satellite Mishap Investigation Board to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent this from happening in the future.

After the Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed to reach orbit two years ago a similar technical glitch forced Orbital Science, the rocket-maker, to redesign the rocket’s fairing — the protective shell on top of the rocket. Now it appears the same problem has returned, though the company tested the rocket several times successfully and NASA’s Flight Planning Board signed off on the corrective actions in October 2010, well ahead of today’s planned launch.

the Glory launch was originally scheduled for February 23 but was delayed until today due to technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle, completely unrelated to the rocket’s fairing.

Here’s the press conference that followed the failure of the Glory mission.