A day without Glory—A critical climate mission a decade in the making fails catastrophically

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/470-7db-8-13

A day without Glory

A critical climate mission a decade in the making fails catastrophically

On a warm afternoon in early March, the Taurus XL rocket that was prepped for launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California looked more like a giant chopstick standing on end than a potential game changer in the debate over climate change science.

The barrel-shaped satellite that the rocket carried — named http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/">Glory — was designed to deliver critical information about small airborne particles called aerosols. The elusive particles account for much of the uncertainty in climate models, and data from the satellite would have helped scientists determine more of the aerosols’ key properties than ever before. Instead, before dawn the next morning and just minutes after launch, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/mar/HQ_11-050_N0_Glory.html">Glory’s remains crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean near Antarctica.

For the dozens of scientists and engineers who spent 10 years working on Glory and its instruments, the loss was heartbreaking. It has also been felt by the entire climate science community, who hoped the mission would provide much-needed aerosol data for use in the next http://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The following recounts the sad tale of Glory’s demise.

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[SpoonFed]

1. I guess that was a fateful mistake in mission naming? n/t

[XemaSab]

2. if they'd named it something else

it wouldn't have gone out in a blaze of glory.

[Nihil]

3. .

:spank: