NASA-TV reports the third stage failed to separate. Press conference in two hours.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html
The folks at MC looked so sad on NASA-TV, I had to turn it off. http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/4492
Bottom line: launching rockets always has been and always will be a risky business. So many different things that can go wrong, and any one of them might prove catastrophic. But if you don't try, you don't fly. The science team must be absolutely gutted to see all their hard work lost so suddenly and so publicly. My sympathies - and I hope everyone else's - to them, if any of them are lurking here.
Briefing on NASA TV now
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/nasa/index.html
Off topic posts removed.
The latest report says it ended up in the ocean.
Short of Antarctica, to be exact.
Sad indeed. Not as disappointing as the loss of Contour, but only because I had never heard of it until reading of the launch failure, so I wasn't anticipating anything.
On NASA-TV's broadcast, everything was "nominal" through the first two stages. Just when I started relaxing, their expressions all changed. A bunch of our "best and brightest" just saw the next several years of their lives change at that moment.
I hope part of the "Contingency" involves rebuilding this important observatory.
Massive suckage
ISTR that commercial satellite launches are insured - if the launcher goes bang, the payload owners get a payout which goes some way, at least, towards rebuilding the lost spacecraft. I'm guessing NASA don't do that?
How many months before we know what happened?
There is also a Canadian nanosatellite doing much the same type of measurements:
http://www.utias-sfl.net/nanosatellites/CanX2/science.html
http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/space/2009/07/nasa-investigators-reveal-findings-on.shtml
It includes a link to the full report.
According to SPACEFLIGHT NOW, OCO2 will not be launched on a Taurus XL rocket and the launch will be delayed to at least mid 2014. The parties "came to an understanding to no longer pursue the launch of OCO2 on a Taurus XL".
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