What do you think this satellite would have told us?
The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off around 2:10 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
But NASA said in a brief statement that a protective shell or fairing atop the rocket did not separate from the satellite as it should have about three minutes after the launch.
That left the Glory spacecraft without the velocity to reach orbit, NASA launch commentator George Diller said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110304/ap_on_sc/us_sci_glory_satellite
http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/
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For those who think privatizing space flight would help and/or who blame NASA alone, you may wish to read this:
"NASA paid Orbital about $54 million to launch Glory, according to Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski. The Taurus rocket has launched nine times, six of them successfully.
NASA and Orbital spent more than a year studying and trying to fix the problem that caused 2009's Orbiting Carbon Observatory to fail." [from the story in the first link]
Here's Orbital's homepage > http://www.orbital.com/