Mother Gaia Swats Down Another Global Warming Satellite

Apparently she doesn't like being spied on for junk science:

A rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite plummeted into the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt Friday, the second-straight blow to NASA's weakened environmental monitoring program.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off early Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but fell to the sea several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring satellite two years ago with the same type of rocket.

During a press conference Friday, officials explained that a protective shell atop the rocket did not separate from the satellite as it should have about three minutes after launch. That left the Glory spacecraft without the velocity to reach orbit.

"We failed to make orbit," NASA launch director Omar Baez said at a press conference Friday. "Indications are that the satellite and rocket ... is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere."

The 2009 failed satellite, which would have studied global warming, crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. Officials said Glory likely wound up landing in the same area. Both were on Taurus rockets launched by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va.

Put Al Gore in one of those and I bet she'd let it fly...as long as it couldn't come back.

UPDATE:  This launch had Obama administration connections:

NASA is launching an investigation into what caused a $424 million satellite, and a key climate research tool, to crash early Friday morning.

The mission was to be the first satellite launch under President Obama's climate initiative and was supposed to "advance the United States' contribution to cutting-edge and policy-relevant climate change science," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, in January.