OCO=Taurus-3110-24.02.09-Vandenberg- авария РН

[Leroy]

Как уж с недавних пор повелось, предлагаю виновником назначить пироболты  

Или "этого Гинзбурга"    :wink:

[sychbird]

Цель запуска утерянного спутника настолько в потенциале чревата серьезными конфликтами и скандалами международными, что нельзя исключить и вероятность диверсии.

[интересующийся]

Цель запуска утерянного спутника настолько в потенциале чревата серьезными конфликтами и скандалами международными, что нельзя исключить и вероятность диверсии.

А еще столкновение с облаком обломков Иридиума и Стрелы :twisted:

[Ярослав]

Цель запуска утерянного спутника настолько в потенциале чревата серьезными конфликтами и скандалами международными, что нельзя исключить и вероятность диверсии.

а может они в лучших наших традициях попилили госбабло и послали за бугор чугунну болванку ?

[pk13]

Как уж с недавних пор повелось, предлагаю виновником назначить пироболты  

А в качестве мероприятий для успеха следующего пуска выкрутить их перед стартом . Вот только где они там?

the two halves of the fairing are structurally joined along their longitudinal interface using a frangible joint system. An additional circumferential frangible joint at the base of the fairing attaches the fairing to the upper stage assembly.

"At separation, a gas pressurization system is activated to pressurize the fairing deployment thrusters. The fairing halves then rotate about external hinges that control the fairing deployment to ensure that payload and launch vehicle clearances are maintained.

frangible joint system где-то там?

[Salo]

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/space/2009/02/leader-named-for-oco-investigation.shtml

Thursday, February 26, 2009
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 fr om 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.

First approved in 2002, OCO was supposed to map in detail for at least two years the sources and "sinks" for carbon dioxide - places wh ere 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.

posted by James Dean at 9:04 AM

[Salo]

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/space/2009/03/launch-group-at-ksc-tallies-remarkable.shtml

Monday, March 02, 2009
Launch Group At KSC Tallies Remarkable Record

 The failed launch last week of a Taurus rocket was a first for NASA's Launch Services Program, which has chalked up a remarkable record of successful launches in the past decade.

Formed in 1998 as part of an agency-wide consolidation, the group tallied an admirable 56 consecutive successful launches between its inaugural launch of Deep Space-1 in October 1998 and the Feb. 9 launch of a national polar-orbiting weather satellite for the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory was lost last Tuesday after a Taurus XL rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California failed in flight. Data telemetered back to Earth during the flight indicated the rocket's payload fairing failed to separate. The rocket crashed into Antarctic seas.

The LSP is based at Kennedy Space Center and manages launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Other launch locations include NASA's Wallops Island flight facility in Virginia, the North Pacific's Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Kodiak Island in Alaska.

The group has lofted a host of historic missions, including the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Lunar Prospector and the Cassini mission to Saturn as well as the Stardust, Genesis and Deep Space missions.

Check out the 1998-2008 record here: LSPLaunchList.pdf.

NASA since 1990 has been procuring launch services from the commercial sector, but up until 1998, management oversight for Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services was performed at two other NASA field centers.

Delta rocket launches were managed by Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio (now known as the Glenn Research Center) managed Atlas rocket missions.

The management oversight for all NASA Expendable Launch Vehicle missions was consolidated at Kennedy Space Center in 1998 as part of an agency reorganization that was ordered up by then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.

Steve Francois is the head of the LSP at KSC. Omar Baez and Chuck Dovale are launch directors for the LSP.

posted by Todd Halvorson at 11:57 AM

[Salo]

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=14874.300

Re: FAILED: Taurus XL - OCO - Feb 23/24, 09.
« Reply #304 on: Today at 08:22 PM »   

Quote from: pad rat on Today at 07:35 PM
I've laid eyes on a draft copy of the OSC Mishap Investigation Board's report. After a quite extensive effort involving lab tests and telemetry analysis, the team has reached some conclusions.

It is believed that the fairing separation failure was caused by a failure in the Hot Gas Generator mechanism. The HGG is a pyro-activated device which generates the pressure to actuate pistons which set the fairing in motion. Analysis indicates that mechanical shocks from earlier pyro events which start the fairing jettison process caused the HGG's pyros to malfunction. The two initiators did not do their job of "starting a fire" in the HGG, hence no pressure was built up to drive the pistons.

Recommended corrective actions include changing from a hot-gas system to a cold-gas system. If the HGG is retained, it is recommended that the shock environment be reduced somehow, along with modification to the initiators to preclude the potential for shock damage. There are other recommendations, but those are the key ones.

No word yet on what solution will be chosen, nor how this will impact preparations for the T9/Glory mission.

Thank you for the update, Mr. Rat, errr, Pad!  A question, hasn't this fairing separation mechanism flown on Taurus XL before?    

 - Ed Kyle

[Чебурашка]

Финальный отчёт комиссии по расследованию причин аварии:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/369037main_OCOexecutivesummary_71609.pdf

Походу, фактическую несброса обтекателя так и не нашли. Выявили Только несколько потенциально проблемных мест.

The MIB analyzed the payload fairing system design, manufacturing, inspection, assembly, and testing, and associated telemetry in order to identify a more detailed cause. The MIB was unable to determine which component or subcomponent was the direct cause for the fairing not to separate, but identified a number of hardware components whose failure modes could be potential causes: fairing base ring frangible joint, electrical subsystem and the pneumatic system hot gas generator (HGG) including its pressure cartridges. The potential causes with specific recommendations are summarized below.

[TestPilot]

А сколько примерно весили обтекатели на ракете такого класса?

[Космос-3794]

Из посвященных кругов стало известно, что внутренняя дискуссия сменилась с "будет ли" на "когда будет" одобрена и профинансирована замена OCO.
Спутник может быть построен и запущен в течении 28 месяцев после начала финансирования - David Crisp, научный руководитель OCO.
В NASA решили что клон первоначальной миссии OCO, использующий идентичный набор инструментов, платформу и носитель, будет наиболее оптимальным решением.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0912/08oco/

[Космос-3794]

Congress also set aside at least $50 million to start a new project to replace the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a carbon-monitoring satellite lost in a launch failure in February.

The budget provides $25 million in new funding and directed NASA to move at least $25 million in leftover money from the agency's science division to go toward an OCO replacement.

NASA has studied fielding a new platform to take the place of OCO, baselining a 28-month schedule to launch after a new project is formally started. Managers recommended flying a carbon copy of OCO, instead of designing a more advanced instrument or combining disparate payloads on a single satellite.

"This is very good news," said David Crisp, OCO's principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "While it won't allow us to maintain a 28-month rebuild schedule, it will allow us to support critical team members, and to make some progress toward a reflight."

For now, the bill also avoids paying for an OCO replacement at the expense of other ongoing or future missions, such as the Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite and the ICESat 2 spacecraft.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0912/13budget/

[Космос-3794]

Из бюджетного запроса  на FY2011:

$170 million to develop and fly a replacement of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a mission to identify global carbon sources and sinks that was lost when its launch vehicle failed in 2009.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/

[Космос-3794]

Новая миссия может быть запущена в феврале 2013, но в NASA не называют формальную дату до проведения утвердительного обзора проекта позднее, в этом году.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1002/03smdbudget/

[Salo]

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2010/03/26/08.xml&headline=Orbit%20Tweaks%20Urged%20For%20OCO%20Replacement%20Sat

Orbit Tweaks Urged For OCO Replacement Sat

Mar 26, 2010

 By Jefferson Morris

A National Academies report on monitoring compliance with climate change treaties formally endorses NASA's plan to build and launch a replacement for its Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) spacecraft, although it suggests the agency consider changing its planned orbit to allow better monitoring of human sources of greenhouse gases.

The first OCO was lost during launch on Feb. 24, 2009, when the fairing on its Taurus XL launch vehicle failed to properly separate. NASA is planning to launch its OCO replacement in February 2013. Orbital Sciences built both the original OCO and the Taurus, and will build the OCO replacement as well, sticking as close to the original design as possible (Aerospace DAILY, March 5).

OCO was designed to study natural CO2 sources and sinks, which results in limitations when monitoring human emission sites, according to the report. With a revisit period of 16 days, it would have sampled only 7%-12% of the Earth's land surface, which would allow only a small percentage of large local emissions sources to be monitored. Also, OCO's two-year design life would only allow it to establish a measurement baseline, rather than document changes over time.

"It would be valuable to explore changes in the orbit and other parameters so that a greater fraction of large (CO2) sources is sampled," the National Academies' National Research Council says in its report, released this week. "For example, consider a precessing orbit covering 100% of the surface but with only two measurements per year of each location.

"With 100-500 large local sources in high-emitting countries, it might be possible to obtain a statistical sample of hundreds of measurements of plumes of CO2 being emitted by the large sources in each of these countries."

Nonetheless, "no other satellite has [OCO's] critical combination of high precision, small footprint, readiness, density of cloud-free measurements, and ability to sense CO2 near the Earth's surface," the report says.

The OCO replacement, plus a follow-up mission at the end of the decade "should be able to determine if trends in the number and average intensity of CO2 'domes' over a country's cities and power plants are consistent with reported fossil-fuel emissions," the panel says.


Artist's concept of Orbiting Carbon Observatory: NASA

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/contracts/100622-orbital-tapped-launch-oco-replacement.html

Tue, 22 June, 2010
Orbital Tapped To Launch OCO Replacement
By Amy Klamper

    WASHINGTON — NASA has selected Orbital Sciences Corp. to launch the agency's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) replacement satellite aboard a Taurus XL rocket, giving the company a second chance after the original spacecraft was lost in a February 2009 failure involving the same vehicle.

    That failure occurred after the vehicle's protective shroud failed to separate properly, and the satellite went crashing into the ocean near Antarctica. Company officials later attributed the problem to a defective component and said it would be relatively easy to fix.

    Dulles, Va.-based Orbital built both the original and replacement OCO craft, designed to take measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. The original was built at a cost of $209 million.

    The replacement spacecraft is expected to launch in February 2013 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., according to a June 22 NASA news release. The launch contract is valued at approximately $70 million, a sum that includes payload processing, mission support, launch integration and tracking, data and telemetry support, the release states.

[Salo]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1006/23oco2/

NASA gives Taurus another chance to launch OCO craft
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 23, 2010

NASA is again turning to the Taurus rocket to loft a replacement carbon-sniffing observatory after a mishap doomed the first try to launch the crucial environmental satellite.

    
File photo of a Taurus rocket launch. Credit: Orbital
 
The second Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO 2, will launch in February 2013 on a Taurus XL 3110 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., NASA announced Tuesday.

The launch contract is valued at $70 million, including the launch service, payload processing, mission-unique support, vehicle integration, and tracking, data and telemetry suppport, according to a NASA statement.

OCO 2 will pinpoint carbon sources and sinks, or regions where carbon is emitted and absorbed into and from the atmosphere. The 1,170-pound satellite will carry a three-channel spectrometer instrument to detect changing concentrations and movements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, including human-produced greenhouse gases.

Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the Taurus rocket's operator and builder. The company will also provide the OCO 2 spacecraft, which will be a carbon-copy of the Orbital-built satellite lost in the 2009 launch failure.

Tuesday's contract announcement was not surprising because OCO 2 project is supposed to be a clone of the doomed mission.

The Taurus XL 3110 vehicle features a Castor 120 first stage motor, enlarged second and third stages, an Orion 38 fourth stage and a 63-inch-diameter payload shroud. All of the rocket's stages consume prepackaged solid propellant.

OCO 2's launch will use an identical rocket to the booster that doomed the $273 million first OCO mission after liftoff in February 2009.

The Taurus rocket's nose fairing did not separate during the flight, weighing down the accelerating launcher and keeping it from reaching orbit. The fairing was supposed to jettison in two halves about three minutes after liftoff.

Investigators were unable to pin down the root cause of the failure, but an independent board found four potential causes of the mishap and recommended fixes for each one.


Artist's concept of the OCO 2 spacecraft in orbit.. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 
The Taurus rocket is scheduled to return to flight Nov. 22 with NASA's Glory satellite to study Earth's energy budget by measuring atmospheric aerosals and the sun's radiation output.

The OCO 2 launch contract gives the Taurus rocket a backlog of two missions. Orbital's air-launched Pegasus rocket also has a pair of flights lined up in 2012, thanks to the addition of another NASA satellite launch awarded earlier this month.

The Taurus and Pegasus families cover a niche launch market for small satellites weighing less than 3,000 pounds and 1,000 pounds, respectively.

But launch numbers have dwindled for both rockets in recent years, especially the Pegasus, which was a workhorse for U.S. military and NASA missions in the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Launch rates are not what they were, but we have a future," said Barron Beneski, an Orbital spokesperson.

Military launches have moved to the Minotaur rocket family made of surplus missile parts and Pegasus stages. Foreign businesses and SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket control the international and commercial markets for light satellite launches.

Despite reports the company may close down one of its small rocket families, Orbital will continue supporting launches of both vehicles for the next few years.

And there are more modest NASA science missions to be launched beyond 2015. Those could be a good fit for the Taurus and Pegasus.

"As long as the flight rate stays about where it is today, I think we'll be OK," Beneski said last week.

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110623-nasa-suspends-payments-orbital.html

Thu, 23 June, 2011
NASA Suspends Payments on Launch Contract with Orbital[/size]
By Brian Berger

 WASHINGTON — NASA is suspending payments on a nearly $70 million contract with Orbital Sciences Corp. for launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 environmental satellite aboard a Taurus XL rocket, which failed in its last two missions.

 Dulles, Va.-based Orbital remains under contract to build OCO-2, a duplicate of the $200 million carbon-mapping satellite destroyed in a 2009 Taurus XL launch failure blamed on payload-fairing separation error. However, the $68.1 million NASA had budgeted for a February 2013 Taurus XL launch of OCO-2 has been "temporarily put on hold" as the agency evaluates "launch services options for the OCO-2 mission," according to NASA's 2011 initial operating plan.

 A copy of the spending plan, delivered to Capitol Hill June 15, was obtained by Space News.

 NASA awarded Orbital the OCO-2 launch contract in 2010. But after losing a second climate-observing craft — the $424 million Glory satellite — in a Taurus XL launch failure in March, NASA's Earth science chief said he would be unwilling to put another satellite on the rocket until it proves itself in flight. The more recent failure also was blamed on a fairing separation issue.

 "I would go more than recertified, personally," Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, told Space News in May. "I would go demonstrated."

 NASA expects OCO-2's launch to be delayed, and the satellite's development cost to rise, as a result of its decision to look for a different rocket.

 In the near term, losing Glory is expected to save NASA about $9 million that would have been spent this year on mission operations.

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/launch/110722-taurus-debut-delayed.html

Thompson also said Orbital has completed a review of the March failure of its smaller Taurus XL rocket, whose fairing malfunctioned for the second consecutive time. In both cases the principal payloads were NASA science satellites whose combined cost is estimated at more than $600 million.

Orbital's June 29 flight of a Minotaur rocket, a converted ICBM, used a fairing that had been redesigned to account for the two Taurus XL failures. The launch, carrying the U.S. Defense Department's Operationally Responsive Space-1 satellite into low Earth orbit, was a success. [/size]

[Космос-3794]

Республиканцы в Палате настаивают на отмене OCO-2 в рамках компании по сокращению бюджетного дефицита на $1.5 триллиона в течении 10 лет.

http://www.spacenews.com/earth_observation/111018-house-republicans-urge-supercommittee-target-nasa-earth-science-for-cuts.html