NASA-TV reports the third stage failed to separate. Press conference in two hours.

NASA report

"payload fairing failed to separate"

Apparent loss of mission, no useful orbit achieved.

The folks at MC looked so sad on NASA-TV, I had to turn it off. spacetoday article

Bottom line: launching rockets always has been and always will be a risky business. So many different things that can go wrong, and any one of them might prove catastrophic. But if you don't try, you don't fly. The science team must be absolutely gutted to see all their hard work lost so suddenly and so publicly. My sympathies - and I hope everyone else's - to them, if any of them are lurking here.

Briefing on NASA TV now

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/nasa/index.html

Off topic posts removed.

At least the Japanese Ibuki satellite seems to have launched successfully, and as far as I can tell it's doing much the same mission as OCO; I don't know what's lost by having only one set of CO2 measurements, but one is a lot better than zero.

The latest report says it ended up in the ocean.

Short of Antarctica, to be exact.

Sad indeed. Not as disappointing as the loss of Contour, but only because I had never heard of it until reading of the launch failure, so I wasn't anticipating anything.

On NASA-TV's broadcast, everything was "nominal" through the first two stages. Just when I started relaxing, their expressions all changed. A bunch of our "best and brightest" just saw the next several years of their lives change at that moment.

I hope part of the "Contingency" involves rebuilding this important observatory.

Massive suckage

ISTR that commercial satellite launches are insured - if the launcher goes bang, the payload owners get a payout which goes some way, at least, towards rebuilding the lost spacecraft. I'm guessing NASA don't do that?

How many months before we know what happened?

No, NASA (and all other space agencies as far as I know) are "self-insured," i.e. rather than buy commercial insurance, they are simply aware of risks and prepared for the fact that they'll have to absorb costs for occasional failures. If you're a big enough entity, dealing with relatively risky stuff, it's much more efficient to self-insure. (Or, basically, the entire American tax base is NASA's insurer.)

--Emily

There is also a Canadian nanosatellite doing much the same type of measurements:

http://www.utias-sfl.net/nanosatellites/CanX2/science.html

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/...ndings-on.shtml
It includes a link to the full report.

According to SPACEFLIGHT NOW, OCO2 will not be launched on a Taurus XL rocket and the launch will be delayed to at least mid 2014. The parties "came to an understanding to no longer pursue the launch of OCO2 on a Taurus XL".