Nasa's S.S.Minnow

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Nasa's first mission to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) from space appears to have failed after a rocket malfunction.

Officials said the fairing - the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher - had failed to separate properly.

If the finding is confirmed, the mission will be lost.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was intended to help pinpoint the key locations on our planet's surface where the gas is being emitted and absorbed.

The $270m mission was launched on a Taurus XL - the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency.

This type of rocket has flown eight times, with two failures including this launch. But this is the first time Nasa has used the Taurus XL.

Onlookers watched the launcher soar into the sky from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 0951 GMT on Tuesday.

Separation problem

The first indication of a problem came in an announcement made by the Nasa launch commentator, George Diller.

"This is Taurus launch control. We have declared a launch contingency, meaning that we did not have a successful launch tonight," he said.

"The OCO spacecraft did not achieve orbit successfully in a way that we could have a mission. They're still looking at the telemetry data here very carefully. It appears that we were getting indications that the fairing was having problems separating.

"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."

OCO was to have measured carbon dioxide on the day-side of Earth

Separation of the fairing was one of the last technical hurdles faced by the satellite as it flew into orbit.

Nasa announced that a press briefing to discuss the failure will take place no earlier than 1300 GMT (0800 EST).

Scientists had hoped the OCO mission would improve models of the Earth's climate and help researchers determine where the greenhouse gas is coming from and how much is being absorbed by forests and oceans.

The satellite was to have flown in a near-polar orbit at an altitude of 705km (438 miles).

Nasa's Glory satellite, which is designed to measure carbon soot and other aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere, is due to launch on a Taurus XL from California in June.

The four-stage Taurus XL rocket is manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation, based in Virginia, US.


A crying shame, this. They finally get a bit of equipment in place to actually measure CO2 where they claim it's causing all the trouble, and they're looking at a write off. That sucks, since this would have been the first real bit of actual evidence one way or the other. It would have been good to see if ground generated CO2 (which is heavier than N2 and O2) could actually make it up into the high atmosphere, and how it was doing it.<


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