Slashdot Mirror
NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory Mission Fails
jw3 writes "The NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory scheduled for launch today has failed its mission: the payload fairing failed to separate and the launch managers declared a contingency. George Diller, NASA launch commentator, said, 'It either did not separate or did not separate in the way that it should, but at any rate we're still trying to evaluate exactly what the status of the spacecraft is at this point.'" Update: 02/24 14:17 GMT by T : Reader fadethepolice points out a Reuters report which says that the craft crashed into the ocean just short of Antarctica.
I know with the Mars rovers the cost of a second rover was small change compared to the development cost of the original. The launch vehicle is expensive, of course, but it was considered cheaper to launch two missions and hope one succeeded than launching one that could fail and mean all the money was wasted.
What sort of contingency do they have for sats like this? Do they just fabricate another one and try again in a year or two?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I wonder if they have another OCO sitting as backup somewhere? Satellites are usually built in pairs just in case one of them fails during launch. Also, the BBC confirmed that the OCO is in the antarctic right now. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7907570.stm
Was the decision to use the Taurus to keep launch costs down? Launching from Vandenberg, I'm assuming they were aiming for a steep inclination. Just wondering if anyone knows why they didn't go with a Delta II....
"*it was going to take readings at 56,000 locations a day but at each location would record carbon dioxide concentrations for the entire air column."
So?
Imagine it actually made it to it's destination. Then what?
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But compared to water vapor, you know, clouds. It's barely anything.
But cheer up, I'm sure something else that's blown far out of proportion will come along. You can really whip out the histrionics then!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
the key satillite designed to monitor global warming and CO2 pollution and hence get scientific data that might affect global business and industrial nations has just nose dived into Antartica?
lets make sure nobody tells the conspiracy theorists, they could have a ball with this one.
Disregarding the melodrama of the GP, I know of several good reasons to measure CO_2 throughout the atmosphere and I'm sure the actual scientists know some more.
The atmosphere is actually quite complex, with different layers and surprisingly little mixing between different levels. I mostly know about the southern ozone hole, being from New Zealand which is still pretty fucked by it. The CFCs which destroyed the ozone were released all over the world - mostly in the northern hemisphere even, since that's where the majority of the population is. However the southern polar vortex is the major cause of mixing between the lower and upper atmosphere, so as the CFCs drifted down to Antarctica they were ejected to the upper atmosphere - where the ozone layer is - and reacted with the ozone there eating a big hole in it.
Similarly, CO_2 is released a ground level, but what effect does it have in different layers of the atmosphere? How fast does distribution to different layers occur? With a satellite which could measure this we could build up a body of data correlating CO_2 concentrations in different parts of the atmosphere with climate change and characterise the movement of CO_2 concentrations through the system, giving us an idea of the lead-in time for CO_2 climate change.
As for why CO_2 is important: it's one variable in a complex equation but it's the one we're directly fiddling with.
My prediction: Nasa will launch another satellite, and the research project will be set back 6 months. Yawn.
.evom ton seod gis eht
I don't know if its really different or whatever, but Japan has a satellite they managed to get off the earth that sounds like its going to do about the same thing. http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
In a polar orbit like OCO would have been in, the satellite would regularly cover the entire earth's surface. The rovers had an expected range of a few hundred meters. Even the amazing dozen kilometers they've covered over their extended missions leaves each still within the major geological features they landed in.
The insurance policy of having a second rover for moderate (not minimal) cost was one factor. I think it increased the costs by about 25%, and put considerable extra strain on the team to get the second unit built in time for the launch window. Launch cost alone was an extra 10% or so.
The other factor was that a second rover allowed them to conduct similar studies of a much different location on Mars, giving the scientists good comparisons of very different geographies. It turned out to be a good thing, too. Opportunity, which landed second, has arguably accomplished much more than Spirit, in large part due to its location. That's not to say that Spirit hasn't also been extremely successful, but Opportunity has tended to steal the spotlight since day 1.
A second copy of OCO would have been producing nearly identical data as the first. Given that this mission was already under pressure just from politics, spending extra money to build a complete spare was unlikely.
However, NASA still has the design work done. We'll have to see if they decide to build a replacement, or simply settle for data from the related Japanese Greenhouse Gasses Observing Satellite launched last month.