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No Shuttle = no hope
Get used to this:
BBC: 4 March 2011 Last updated at 05:40 ET Nasa Glory mission ends in failure By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Glory Continue reading the main story Related Stories * Euro space laser gets go ahead * Climate change glossary: A-B * 'No man-made fix' for rising seas The US space agency's (Nasa) attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure. The Glory satellite lifted off from California on a quest to gather new data on factors that influence the climate. But about six minutes into the flight, officials became aware of a problem. It appears the fairing - the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher - did not separate properly. This would have made the rocket too heavy and therefore too slow to achieve its intended 700km orbit. It would probably have fallen into the Ocean near the Antarctic, but this still has to be confirmed. It is the exact same failure which befell Nasa's Orbiting Carbon Observatory in 2009. It too launched on a Taurus XL rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and again the fairing failed to separate properly. On that occasion a "Mishap Investigation Board" was established to determine the root cause of the nose cone's failure and to make recommendations to remedy the malfunction. It noted four hardware problems that needed correction. Friday's launch was the XL's return to flight after the OCO loss. Another board will now have to be convened. The loss of Glory is a huge blow to the Orbital Sciences Corporation. It makes the rocket and assembled the Glory satellite for Nasa. Glory was carrying two instruments. One of its instruments would have measured the total energy coming from the Sun; the other would have looked at particles in the atmosphere that can trap that energy or scatter it back out into space. Understanding both is vital to our ability to forecast future change. The Taurus XL lifted off at 0209 Pacific Standard Time (1009 GMT). A number of sensors on the rocket would have indicated the fairing failure, and the launch director Omar Baez had no choice but to declare a spacecraft contingency. The Taurus XL is the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency. Since its debut in 1994, this type of rocket has flown nine times, with six successes and three failures including this launch. This was the second time Nasa had tried to launch a satellite on the XL. The OCO mission which failed in 2009 is being rebuilt and is due to be launched on another Taurus XL rocket in 2013. The British OCO scientist, Dr Paul Palmer from Edinburgh University, commented: "This is another big blow for the Nasa Earth science programme, particularly because the reason for the failure appears to be the same as that which affected the OCO launch . It's also sad news for the climate community - Glory promised to provide important information we desperately need for better understanding Earth's radiative balance," he told BBC News. "Sometimes we forget because we rely on satellites every day that launching instruments into an Earth orbit is still a risky business and that we should expect a few failures." |
#2
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No Shuttle = no hope
In article ,
Rich wrote: Get used to this: This is NASA deciding that pushing money towards random US startup providers of launch services is more important than actually getting satellites launched - they should at least have asked Taurus to launch 500kg of bits of scrap metal and check that the fairing deployed before giving them a second real satellite to drop into the Antarctic ocean. Soyuz is really quite reliable. There hasn't been a satellite launched on the Shuttle since 2000. Tom |
#3
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No Shuttle = no hope
On 3/5/11 2:18 AM, Rich wrote:
The Shuttle is the only reliable delivery system available, from any country. Even though one blew up and another one burned up? There is always risk associate with space launches. So many thousands of things have to work properly. |
#4
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No Shuttle = no hope
On Mar 5, 8:58*am, Chris L Peterson wrote:
The shuttle was developed to carry people, and to carry extremely heavy cargo. It was never intended to deliver most satellites to space. Before the Challenger disaster, it was carrying some relatively prosaic satellites into space. Here's a garden-variety geostationary communications satellite being released from the Space Shuttle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STS-5_Anik_deploy.png John Savard |
#5
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No Shuttle = no hope
On Mar 5, 8:14*pm, Quadibloc wrote:
Here's a garden-variety geostationary communications satellite being released from the Space Shuttle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STS-5_Anik_deploy.png And here's a video of a similar American satellite being deployed from the Shuttle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PWlp8vufqI John Savard |
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