But Not As Far As Planned

To hear Boeing tell it, Tuesday's launch of the massive Delta 4 heavy-lift rocket was a success. But the dummy payload it carried is in the wrong orbit, the result of a shortened first-stage burn. Success appears to be relative.

The 23-story tall rocket lifted off pad 37B late Tuesday afternoon (above). Five-and-a-half minutes later, the first stage engine shut down -- somewhat before it was scheduled to do so. At this point, no one knows why.

"The first stage burned a little shorter than we expected," Boeing spokesman Robert Villanueva told the Orlando Sentinel. "The second stage burned a little longer to make up for it."

Because of that, the second stage didn't have enough fuel to properly insert the 6.7-ton payload into orbit, 22,000 miles above the Earth.

Not only did the rocket fail to boost its payload into the right orbit, signals from two small probes built by students from Arizona State University and the University of Colorado were never received by ground stations. They were supposed to be released from the rocket about 16 minutes after launch. It's unclear if they were ever actually released.

The Boeing launch comes on the heels of Friday's successful mission involving a rocket from the Chicago-based company's arch-rival, Lockheed-Martin (above). It was the fourth successful launch of Lockheed's Atlas 5, which carried a communications satellite safely into space.

That puts the pressure on Boeing to find the cause of Tuesday's miscue and identify steps that will prevent it from happening in the future.

FMI: www.boeing.com, www.lockheed-martin.com