CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A commercial imaging satellite that might have played a role in America's response to terrorist attacks and a NASA probe to study Earth's ozone layer were still lost in space late Friday afternoon after a troubled launch from California atop a Taurus booster.
"It appears there was an inflight anamoly, of what origin we do not yet know," said Barry Beneski, spokesman for Orbital Sciences Corp., the company responsible for launching the Taurus rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. "We are not certain as of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) if the satellites achieved orbit."
A statement released by the company a short time later said engineers believed "the rocket released the satellites at alower altitude and velocity than intended and that they did not achieve a stable orbit," but there still was no confirmation on the exact status of the spacecraft.
The Taurus lifted off on time at 2:49 p.m. EDT (1649 GMT), it's Castor 120 first stage burning as expected as the rocket rose from a fog bank and then streaked downrange over the Pacific Ocean.
About one minute and 23 seconds after launch the first stage separated and the second stage was ignited. This second stage is essentially the same first stage as the winged Pegasus booster launched by Orbital Sciences from the belly of its L-1011 jumbo jet dubbed Stargazer.
Almost immediately the second stage could be seen by tracking cameras to be turning basically sideways to the direction of flight. Veteran space buffs immediately suggested the worst was about to happen, but somehow the second stage retained control, righted itself and continued the climb into space.All of the major mission events took place as planned with the four-stage rocket completing its mission and releasing the two satellites -- Orbital Imaging Corp.'s OrbView-4 imager and NASA's QuikTOMS ozone mapper -- from its upper stage.
Unfortunately, it appears the earlier problem with the second stage prevented the rocket from reaching its desired speed and dropped the satellites off into a lower-than-intended orbit, Beneski said.
Ground stations expecting to hear from the satellites instead heard nothing and a search was underway for the spacecraft to learn if they were in a very low orbit or perhaps had already re-entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up.
Five previous Taurus missions dating back to 1994 have been successful. This first failure comes on the heels of the loss of NASA's X-43 hypersonic research plane that was taking a ride on the nose of a modified Pegasus XL rocket in June when that rocket flew off course and was destroyed.
Although the Taurus shares similar hardware with the Pegasus, company officials had exonerated the Taurus of any concerns before its launch.
Also hoping to clear their launch vehicle of any concerns because of shared hardware is the Athena 1 launch team now preparing to send their booster on its way Saturday from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska.
The Athena 1 -- which is to carry a NASA student payload and a trio of satellites for the Air Force -- and the Taurus share the same Castor 120 first stage.
"We don't know yet for sure if that will be a problem for us," said NASA spokesman George Diller. "We believe that the first stage booster is probably OK, but we have not completed the data review to prove it."
A decision on whether the Athena will make the attempt or not is expected late Friday or early Saturday.
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