NASA's latest space mishap

Essential Linkage: NASA's CO2 monitoring mission fails

Only shortly after the mid-space blunder of Friday the 13th, there has been another NASA-related accident.

A new satellite was intended to be flown up into low-earth orbit yesterday, which had a very different mission compared to the communication and observation satellites already up there.

Called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, this satellite was intended to orbit the Earth and monitor the heaviest concentrations of Carbon Dioxide, as well as monitor the most likely areas where carbon seems to pool.

Launched upwards in a Taurus XL rocket (itself based on a modified Pegasus rocket), NASA had a failure at the very last stages of flight.

Most rockets in use today are multi-stage, and consist of separate rockets that begin together, and fall away piece by piece until just the payload is left to be ejected into space.

However, the OCO satellite didn't break away from the rocket - instead it clung to it like a howler monkey to a rich tourist's face, taking it back down planetside and straight into a US$270 million waste of money, supposedly landing somewhere near Antarctica.

It is quite interesting where the CO2 in our planet resides too, as BBC news UK explains:

Only about 50% of the carbon emitted from human sources - principally, from fossil fuel combustion - stays there. The remainder is mopped up by the land and oceans, which act as "sinks".

However, scientists are unsure of the precise detail, with perhaps 20% of our CO2 going into a hitherto unrecognised sink.

The whole issue is just another example of how tech can go wrong, but there's a lot of info and even a video to pore over at BBC UK, so head there to check those out and some design specs.