WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency has named the officials who will investigate the cause of the unsuccessful Feb 24 launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite.
The satellite failed to reach orbit after its liftoff from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The space agency said the board is charged with identifying the causes and contributing factors of the failure. It will then issue recommendations for actions to prevent a similar incident.
The board will be led by Rick Obenschain, deputy director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The panel's four other voting members are Jose Caraballo, safety manager at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; Patricia Jones, acting chief of the Human Systems Integration Division at the Ames Research Center; Richard Lynch of aerospace systems engineering at the Goddard Space Flight Center; and Dave Sollberger, deputy chief engineer of launch services at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA said Ruth Jones, safety and mission assurance manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center, will be a non-voting member charged with assuring the board's activities conform to NASA procedural requirements.
