Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/27856
Time-sensitive GeoWorld departments such as NetLink, PeopleLink, Product News and Business News now are maintained solely at the GeoPlace.com Web site. Check there often for the latest updates as they happen. assessing overall damage as well as planning forest restoration and cleanup. “The forestry agencies that obtained imagery from Sachsenforst using our data portal responded positively to the experience,” said Karina Hoffman, remote-sensing consultant at Sachsenforst. “We were able to successfully manage our orthoimages and safely deliver them online with very good perfor- mance. This approach serves as a model for future disaster-response endeavors.” Launch of NASA Satellite Fails NASA’s latest Earth-observing satellite mission—the agency’s Glory mission—failed to make orbit after a protec- tive shell on the rocket carrying the satellite didn’t sepa- rate as expected. The failure occurred about three minutes after launch on March 4, 2011. Successful launch of Glory would have given insight into how the planet’s climate is affected by the sun and aero- sols in the atmosphere. Glory, which had been positioned for launch at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base in February 2011, would have joined a fleet of satellites known as the Afternoon Constellation or “A-train”—a group of Earth-observing satellites, including NASA’s Aqua and Aura spacecraft, that fly in tight formation. NASA officials were hopeful for the Glory mission. Weeks before the failed launch, Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, had said, “Glory is going to help scientists tackle one of the major uncertainties in climate-change predictions identified by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the influence of aerosols on the energy bal- ance of our planet. This mission also marks the first satellite launch under President Obama’s climate initiative that will advance the United States’ contribution to cutting-edge and policy-relevant climate-change science.” Now, NASA leaders are trying to determine how exactly things went wrong with the launch, and the agency has established a Mishap Investigation Board for the failed Glory mission. Failure of the protective shell, called a “fairing,” occurred during the second-stage engine burn, according to NASA. The spacecraft likely fell into the South Pacific, but the exact location isn’t yet known. The Glory failure echoes another NASA satellite launch failure in early 2009, when an Orbiting Carbon Observatory onboard a similar Taurus XL rocket failed to reach orbit after the fairing didn’t separate. Following that incident, an Orbiting Carbon Observatory Mishap Investigation Board reviewed launch data and the fairing-separation system design, ultimately developing a corrective action plan that was executed by Orbital Sciences Corp., maker of the Taurus NASA’s Glory satellite (shown in an artist’s rendering) failed to make orbit after its launch in early March 2011. XL. And in October 2010, NASA’s Flight Planning Board con- firmed successful closure of the corrective actions. For NASA, loss of Glory represents a missed opportunity to capture valuable data. Ultimately, data gleaned by Glory would have worked their way into modeling and mapping applications for climate research and prediction. The satel- lite carried two primary instruments: an Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS) and a Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM). The APS would have improved measurement of aerosols, which can influence climate by reflecting and absorbing solar radiation as well as modifying clouds and precipi- tation. APS would have collected data at nine different wavelengths, ranging from the visible to shortwave infrared, and the information would have been used to refine global climate models and help scientists determine how the planet is responding to human activities. The TIM would have produced data on the solar energy striking the top of Earth’s atmosphere—total solar irradi- ance. That would have given scientists a new way to test climate models and understand the impact of the sun’s longer cyclical changes. M A R C H 2 O 1 1 / W W W . G E O P L A C E . C O M 7 NASA