Perhaps the 63″ Fairing is the issue…
This Yahoo! News story mentions the attempted launch of a Taurus-XL rocket, carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory which would have provided better data to base climate models on… bummer.
Judging by the launch history of the Taurus-XL rocket, the last 2 Taurus launches involving the 63″ fairing have failed. The working explanation for the current one is a failure of the fairing to open properly. The previous 63″ fairing mission was to launch “Orbview-4/QuickTOMS” in 2001, and I have no idea at all what that was supposed to be. Nor have I been able to find anything relating to the launch failure. Weird.
The Taurus-XL is made by Orbital Sciences which also makes the Pegasus series of aircraft-launched expendable launch vehicles, components of which are incorporated into the Taurus-XL. I was watching a Nova special recently (I think it was “Death of a Star”) where they were interviewing this scientist involved in the HETE mission. This was back in 1996. The scientist they interviewed said (and I’m paraphrasing, here) that NASA told them HETE was going up on a Pegasus, and his team told NASA, in effect, that the Pegasus was the rocket you used if you wanted the mission to fail. NASA told them, you take this ride, or you don’t go. They took the ride and lost the mission. Great.
So this OCO mission sounds pretty timely, and important. I wonder if there’s going to be any attempt to launch another OCO… or… if, like most science missions, they get one try, and that’s it. Military missions, it seems like they just keep lobbing them up there until one sticks. Science apparently gets one shot.