Oh, No! OCO Fails To Reach Orbit

Editor's note: the "anomaly" press briefing is now scheduled no earlier than 8 a.m. EST.

A $273.4-million NASA mission to map a key greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere has failed to reach its intended orbit.

The payload shroud surrounding the Orbiting Carbon Observatory spacecraft apparently failed to separate more than 12 minutes into a flight that began at 4:55 a.m. EST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The shroud, also called the nose cone or fairing, should have separated like a clam shell.

"It appears that we were getting indications that the fairing was having problems separating," said George Diller, NASA TV's launch commentator and Kennedy Space Center public affairs official.

"It either did not separate or did not separate in the way that it should. But, at any rate, we are still trying to evaluate exactly what the status of the spacecraft is at this point and confirm the location and the orbit and the exact state the spacecraft is in."

All systems were reported "nominal" until NASA Launch Director Chuck Dovale interrupted the commentary from the mission director's center at Vandenberg.

"It appears we've had a contingency with the OCO mission," he said. "Please enact the mission mishap preparedness and contingency plan."


A press conference to further explain the mishap is expected no earlier than 7:15 a.m. EST.

You can watch it live here on The Flame Trench. Click on the NASA TV image on the right side of the page to launch a live viewer.

It is the second failure in eight launches for a Taurus rocket, which debuted in 1994.

Two satellites - including NASA's $50 million ozone-monitoring QuikTOMS satellite - and the cremated remains of 50 people were lost during a failure on Sep. 21, 2001, according to an Associated Press report. The report said the rocket veered from its intended path and fell to the Indian Ocean.

Click "Read more..." to see pictures of this morning's liftoff.

Here's a fact sheet on the Taurus, and a link to Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp.

The four-stage rocket is a ground-based variation of the Pegasus rocket launched from the air.





















IMAGE NOTES: Click to enlarge the images. Top: On Launch Complex 576-E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Feb. 19, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, spacecraft awaits a GN2 instrument purge flow test in preparation for launch Feb. 24. The spacecraft sits atop Orbital Sciences' Taurus XL rocket. Photo credit: Jim Stowers, Orbital Sciences. Second: The second half of the fairing, at right, is moved closer to NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, at left, to complete installation. The work is being done in Building 1032 of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The fairing is a molded structure that fits flush with the outside surface of the rocket and forms an aerodynamically smooth nose cone, protecting the spacecraft during launch and ascent. Photo credit: NASA/Robert Hargreaves Jr., VAFB. Below: launch controllers monitoring the flight and launch images all from NASA TV.