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Failed Launch, Satellite Falls Back To Earth

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Feb 24, 2009 10:00 am US/Pacific

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE (AP) ―

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A NASA mission to monitor global warming from space ended Tuesday
when a satellite plunged into the ocean near Antarctica minutes after launch. An
equipment malfunction was apparently to blame, officials said.

The loss
of the $280 million mission came a month after Japan launched the world's first
spacecraft to track global warming emissions. The failure dealt a blow to NASA,
which had hoped to send up its own satellite to measure carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas behind human-caused global warming.

The crash came just
after liftoff from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast.
A Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off as
scheduled shortly before 2 a.m.

Three minutes into the flight, the nose
cone protecting the satellite failed to come off as designed, NASA officials
said. The extra weight from the cover caused the rocket to dive back to Earth,
splashing into the ocean near Antarctica, where a group of environment ministers
from more than a dozen countries met Monday to get the latest science on global
warming.

"Certainly for the science community it's a huge
disappointment," said John Brunschwyler, Taurus project manager for Orbital
Sciences Corp., which built the rocket and satellite. "It's taken so long to get
here."

The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into a polar
orbit some 400 miles high. The project was nine years in the making, and the
mission was supposed to last two years.

The observatory was NASA's first
satellite dedicated to monitoring carbon dioxide on a global scale. Measurements
collected by the satellite were expected to improve climate models and help
researchers determine where the greenhouse gas originates and how much is being
absorbed by forests and oceans.

"Wow! Bad news this morning," said Scott
Denning, an atmospheric science professor at Colorado State University in Fort
Collins, Colo., and a member of the team that planned to analyze data from the
satellite. "We put years into getting ready for this."

Carbon dioxide is
the leading greenhouse gas and its buildup helps trap heat from the sun, causing
potentially dangerous warming of the planet. Scientists now depend on 282
land-based stations -- and scattered instrumented aircraft flights -- to monitor
carbon dioxide at low altitudes.

Engineers will look at existing
spacecraft parts to see if it makes sense to build another carbon observatory,
said Mike Freilich, Earth science division director at NASA headquarters.

A team of experts will investigate the loss of the satellite. It's the
first launch failure for the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences since 2001. That
year, a NASA ozone monitoring satellite and a cargo of human ashes aboard a
Taurus XL fell into the Indian Ocean after veering off course during launch.

Orbital's Brunschwyler said the company has a "nearly perfect" launch
record and has not had any previous problems with its clamshell nose cone
design.

Tuesday's failure put on hold the summer launch of another NASA
satellite Glory, which will measure soot and aerosols in the atmosphere, said
launch manager Charles Dovale.

Carbon dioxide emissions rose 3 percent
worldwide from 2006 to 2007, according to international science agencies.

Scientists lamented the loss of the global warming satellite.

The satellite would have helped scientists confirm whether there was a
drop in worldwide emissions, Alan Robock of Rutgers University wrote in an
e-mail.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights
Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.)

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