Leader Named for OCO Investigation

NASA has named Rick Obenschain, deputy director of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to lead the investigation into Tuesday's failed launch of a $273.4-million climate change satellite.

The payload fairing atop an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket did not break away as it should have less than three minutes after the booster blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

As a result, the four-stage rocket's two remaining stages slowed and fell back into the ocean near Antarctica, carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory with it.

Obenschain will lead a Mishap Investigation Board that includes four other members who have not yet been named.

NASA says the investigative board will gather information in an effort to determine the failure's root cause, then make recommendations for how to prevent a similar event.

Here's some background on Obenschain provided by NASA:

Obenschain shares responsibility for executive leadership and overall direction and management of Goddard and its assigned programs and projects. He also is responsible for providing executive oversight and technical evaluation for the development and delivery for Goddard space systems launch and operations.

Previously, Obenschain was appointed director of the Flight Projects Directorate in September 2004, and was responsible for the day-to-day management of more than 40 space and Earth science missions. He has held a number of project management positions at Goddard.

Obenschain is the recipient of NASA's Distinguished Service Medal, Exceptional Service Medal, Outstanding Leadership Medal, Equal Opportunity Medal, and Goddard's Award of Merit. In 1995, he received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics von Braun Award for Excellence in Space Program Management.

You can read a full bio here.

And you can link to the OCO mission page here, or check out this mission fact sheet and press kit.

First approved in 2002, OCO was supposed to map in detail for at least two years the sources and "sinks" for carbon dioxide - places where the gas is released into Earth's atmosphere and absorbed by plants and oceans.

The observatory's coverage would have been far more comprehensive than current monitoring stations provide, and could have significantly improved modeling of climate change.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose levels have risen dramatically because of human activity since the industrial age, like the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

The launch failure was the first overseen by NASA launch managers since 1996. A NASA ozone-monitoring satellite was lost in 2001 as a secondary payload on the only other Taurus rocket failure. It ended up in the Indian Ocean.

The Taurus now has two failures in eight launches.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge the images. Above: NASAs Orbiting Carbon Observatory and its Taurus booster blasted off Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A contingency was declared a few minutes later. Image credit: Orbital Sciences Corp. Below: Goddard Deputy Director Rick Obenschain. Credit: NASA/Pat Izzo.