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September
21, 2001 - TAURUS ROCKET FAILS TO DELIVER QUIKTOMS TO ORBIT The
NASA QuikTOMS ozone monitoring satellite launched on September 21st was lost due
to the failure of the commercial launch vehicle purchased by the Agency to deliver
the payload into orbit. QuikTOMS
was a secondary payload on board a Taurus rocket launched by Orbital Sciences
Corporation at 2:49 p.m. EDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Everything
appeared to go as planned with the launch until approximately 83 seconds into
the flight when there was an apparent problem between the first and second stage
separation. For reasons yet unknown, the rocket appeared to briefly veer off course
before correction motors restored the vehicle to its proper flight path. Flight
managers believe problem with staging caused the rocket to lose velocity, which
resulted in QuikTOMS and the other payloads being placed in an improper orbit
with insufficient speed. "Obviously
we are disappointed at the loss of the QuikTOMS satellite," said Dr. Ghassem
Asrar, Associate Administrator for the Office of Earth Science at NASA Headquarters
in Washington. "This loss of QuikTOMS does not mean a loss in our ozone monitoring
capability. We have the current TOMS Earth Probe satellite in orbit which will
continue its observations and we plan to launch the EOS-Aura satellite in 2003
to assure the continuity of these critical ozone measurements." Orbital
Sciences Corporation will convene a failure investigation committee, to determine
the cause of today's launch failure. NASA has been invited to lend its expertise,
as an observer, to the investigation. Orbital believes that it gathered sufficient
data during the flight to enable the company to identify the cause of the failure.
For more on Orbital,
click here.
September
18, 2001 - QUIKTOMS OZONE MONITORING INSTRUMENT PREPARED FOR LAUNCH NASA
soon will launch its latest ozone-monitoring instrument, which will allow scientists
to continue their long-term measurements of global ozone levels. The QUIKTOMS
or Quick Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) is scheduled
to lift off
from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., at 2:49
p.m. EDT on September 21,
on an Orbital Sciences Corporation
Taurus rocket. Built
in just two years rather than the traditional three to
five, QuikTOMS will
take over for the TOMS spacecraft in
monitoring global ozone levels (including
springtime ozone
depletion in both the Arctic and the Antarctic), sulfur
dioxide, ash, smoke from fires, and ultraviolet radiation
reaching the Earth's
surface. QuikTOMS
follows on a 23-year legacy; this type of extended
observation allows scientists
to distinguish human-forced
changes from natural atmospheric variations and
helps
quantify the roles of these factors. Such extended,
calibrated observations
are required for researchers to see
the future ozone recovery expected as
a result of the 1987
Montreal Protocol, as amended, which limited the production
of ozone-destroying industrial chemicals such as
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). QuikTOMS
will allow for continued study of the annually
recurring Antarctic ozone hole.
The year 2000 marked the
largest Antarctic hole ever observed -- 28.3 million
square
kilometers, roughly three times the size of the United
States.
QuikTOMS will continue the important job of ozone
monitoring now done by the
five-year old TOMS instrument on
Earth Probe which is beginning to show signs
of aging. "NASA
is pleased with Orbital's cooperation, teamwork and
dedication throughout
the development and launch preparations
of the QuikTOMS spacecraft, instrument
and launch vehicle,"
said Kenneth Schwer, the QuikTOMS Project Manager.
"NASA's
innovative acquisition tools continue to provide excellent
avenues for achieving acceptable low-cost and quick
missions." Although
the TOMS data will be used primarily to study ozone,
the information gained
from TOMS will also contribute to
volcanic studies. Volcanoes generate sulfur
dioxide (SO2) in
the Earth's atmosphere, and the TOMS instrument can track
this gas. The gas is rapidly transformed into sulfate
aerosols, which can
persist in the stratosphere for months to
years. Sulfur dioxide's effects
in the stratosphere include
the red sunsets that follow major volcanic eruptions.
The
effects cause chemical changes in the atmosphere and are
associated
with climate change. TOMS
also can track smoke from forest fires such as those in
the Northwestern United
States this year, as well as smoke
plumes from fires set to clear land in
Africa and South
America. Also
aboard Orbital's four-stage ground-launch rocket will be
the OrbView-4 high-resolution
and hyperspectral imaging
satellite that Orbital built for Orbital Imaging
Corporation
(ORBIMAGE). In addition, the Taurus rocket will carry a small
payload for Celestis, Inc., which will not separate from the
rocket's final
stage once it reaches orbit. On
launch day, the Taurus rocket will be prepared for its
mission during a three-hour
countdown procedure. Following a
final launch decision, the vehicle will ignite
its first
stage rocket motor, lift off and follow a pre-programmed
launch
sequence controlled by its onboard flight computer.
Approximately 11 and a
half minutes after liftoff, Taurus
will deliver the OrbView-4 spacecraft into
a Sun-synchronous
orbit approximately 470 kilometers above the Earth. About
two
and a half minutes later, Taurus will deploy the QuikTOMS
satellite
into a Sun-synchronous orbit also 470 kilometers
above the Earth. Afterward,
the satellite's onboard
propulsion system will boost the QuikTOMS spacecraft
into its
final 800-kilometer orbit. TOMS
is a second-generation, ozone-sounding instrument
derived from the Backscatter
Ultraviolet (BUV) Spectrometer
flown aboard NASA's Nimbus-4 satellite in 1970.
The first
TOMS instrument was launched aboard Nimbus-7 in 1978. The
Nimbus-7
TOMS operated almost continuously from its launch
until its failure in 1993,
providing more than 15 years of
daily global maps of total ozone. The Meteor-3
TOMS, ADEOS
TOMS and the Earth Probe TOMS followed the Nimbus-7 TOMS. Note
to Editors: QuikTOMS b-roll of imagery and other
materials will be broadcast
during the NASA TV Video File
feed September 20, 2001, at noon, 3 p.m., 6
p.m., 9 p.m. and
midnight EDT. NASA TV is broadcast on GE-2, transponder 9C,
C-band, located at 85 degrees West Longitude. The frequency
is 3880 MHz. Polarization
is vertical and audio is monaural
at 6.8 MHz.
QuikTOMS
Mission
The
QuikTOMS mission is to continue daily mapping of the global distribution of the
Earth's total column of the atmospheric ozone with Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
Flight Model 5 (TOMS-5). TOMS-5 was scheduled to be launched in the year 2000
aboard the Russian satellite, Meteor-3M(2), but the Meteor-3M(2)/TOMS-5 mission
was terminated in April 1999. Because of the timeliness requirement of ozone monitoring,
NASA had to formulate a new mission to fly TOMS-5 in a very short time. The continuous
observation of the global ozone past the year 2000 is critical in order to monitor
the expected recovery of ozone as levels of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) decrease
from their current maximum as a result of the Montreal Protocol limits. The
QuikTOMS spacecraft is a modified Microstar Bus tailored for the QuikTOMS mission,
and is procured through the NASA/GSFC Rapid Spacecraft Development Office (RSDO)'s
the Indefinite Quantity Indefinite Delivery (IQID) contract from the RSDO's catalog.
The
launch vehicle for QuikTOMS is Taurus. QuikTOMS, as a secondary payload, shares
the ride with with Orbview-4. The launch vehicle service is procured through the
contract between NASA/KSC and the Orbital Sciences Corporation.
Launch Date: NET 21 September 2001 (as of August 21, 2001)
Mission
Life: Three years. Mission
Orbit: Sun synchronous, 800 km circular orbit, 10:30 am equator crossing in descending
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