It's Full of Stars

NASA’s Glory Spacecraft Launches from Vandenberg but Fails to Reach Orbit

A Taurus XL rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Friday but failed to place its payload of a NASA Glory Earth-observation satellite and three CubeSat nano satellites into orbit. The rocket likely crashed in the southern Pacific Ocean, NASA officials said.

The NASA Glory Earth-observation satellite was intended to improve our understanding of how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth’s climate. A similar problem with the Taurus XL rocket’s fairing caused the launch failure of another satellite, the $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory, in February 2009. That was the last time NASA used the Taurus XL as a launch vehicle (ClimateWire, Feb. 25, 2009).

The $424 million mission was managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The three CubeSats were designed and built by students from the University of Colorado, the University of Kentucky and Montana State University.