spacetoday.net: Glory launch fails

Posted: Fri, Mar 4, 2011, 7:28 AM ET (1228 GMT)
Glory illustration (NASA)

A NASA climate satellite failed to each orbit early Friday in a launch failure eerily similar to one just over two years ago. A Taurus XL rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 5:09 am EST (1009 GMT) carrying NASA's Glory earth sciences spacecraft. However, several minutes after liftoff launch controllers declared a contingency when they received telemetry that the rocket's payload fairing failed to separate as planned. The additional mass of the payload fairing kept the rocket from reaching orbit. The failure appears very similar to the loss of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite in February 2009, also lost when the payload fairing of the Taurus XL launching it failed to separate after launch.