Photonbelt

Nasa has lost it’s critical satellite of its $280 million climate-change mission after a catastrophic launch fault today.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite was fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a rocket, but after blasting through the Earth’s atmosphere its protective shield failed to jettison.

Another mishap in low Earth orbit, space doesn’t seem a safe place at the moment what with the collision between the CIA owned Iridium satellite and an old Russian craft last week. Not to mention the Chinese with a rather unsophisticated yet very efficient method of taking out orbital vehicles with relative ease.

The tin foil hat crew are already all over this with theories ranging from the Chinese holding the US/UK to ransom over toxic debt. Destroying the probe to prevent data backing man made climate change from holding back development of their coal-fuelled economy. There’s the usual it’s the aliens camp, and the theory that it was taken out to prevent irrefutable proof that humans effect on the climate of Earth is nothing to be concerned about, and then there’s a few realists like us here at the belt that have seen more than a few mishaps with expensive space based technology and tend to err on the side of human error.

More here at the BBC.