[Satellite News 02-26-09] Orbital Sciences is in the initial stages of an investigation, in coordination with NASA, to determine the cause of Taurus launch failure that destroyed the agency’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) Orbital spokesman Barry Beneski told Satellite Today Feb. 25.
    "We assembled a internal failure investigation board made up of senior Orbital engineers with NASA participation on that board," he said. "We are examining the data from the failure and are doing a deep forensic analysis on it to determine the cause and offer a corrective course of action which will implement into our program so we can move forward, but, that process takes a while. We don’t have an exact time frame on it, but we’re talking about a matter of weeks, maybe months."
    OCO was designed to track the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to better understand the role the greenhouse gas plays in the Earth’s climate. According to initial reports, the Taurus XL rocket carrying OCO satellite failed after the rocket’s payload fairing failed to separate properly. NASA officials declared a mission failure about 13 minutes after launch and does not know if the satellite ever reached orbit.

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