Hermes was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 which was to have been operated by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. Intended to perform technology demonstration experiments in low Earth orbit

Low Earth orbit

A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

, it was lost during launch in March 2011 when the rocket that was carrying it failed to achieve orbit.

Hermes was a single-unit CubeSat

CubeSat

A CubeSat is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that usually has a volume of exactly one liter , has a mass of no more than 1.33 kilograms, and typically uses commercial off-the-shelf electronics components...

 picosatellite which was primarily designed to test communications systems for future satellites. It was intended to test a new system which would allow data to be transferred at a higher rate than on previous satellites, thereby enabling future missions to return more data from scientific experiments or images. A secondary objective was to have seen tests performed upon the satellite bus, which was to have served as the basis for future COSGC missions. The satellite would also have returned data on the temperature and magnetic field of its surroundings.

Hermes was launched by Orbital Sciences Corporation

Orbital Sciences Corporation

Orbital Sciences Corporation is an American company which specializes in the manufacturing and launch of satellites. Its Launch Systems Group is heavily involved with missile defense launch systems...

 using a Taurus-XL 3110 carrier rocket flying from Launch Complex 576E

Vandenberg AFB Launch Complex 576

Launch Complex 576, also known as Area 576, is a group of rocket launch pads at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The pads at the complex were used from 1959 until 1971 to launch SM-65 Atlas missiles. The site was also known as Complex ABRES...

 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base

Vandenberg Air Force Base

Vandenberg Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately northwest of Lompoc, California. It is under the jurisdiction of the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command ....

 in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. It was a secondary payload on the launch, with the primary payload being the NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 Glory

Glory (satellite)

The Glory satellite was a planned NASA satellite mission that would have collected data on the chemical, micro-physical and optical properties—and the spatial and temporal distributions—of sulfate and other aerosols, and would have collected solar irradiance data for the long-term climate record...

 spacecraft. The KySat-1

KySat-1

KySat-1 was an American satellite which was to have been operated by Kentucky Space. Designed to operate for eighteen to twenty four months, it was lost in a launch failure in March 2011 after the Taurus rocket carrying it failed to achieve orbit....

 and Explorer-1 [Prime] satellites were launched aboard the same rocket. The launch took place at 10:09:43 UTC on 4 March 2011, and ended in failure after the payload fairing

Payload fairing

Payload fairing is one of the main components of a launch vehicle. The fairing protects the payload during the ascent against the impact of the atmosphere . More recently, an additional function is to maintain the cleanroom environment for precision instruments.Outside the atmosphere the fairing is...

 failed to separate from around the spacecraft just under three minutes after launch. With the fairing still attached the rocket had too much mass to achieve orbit, and reentered

Atmospheric reentry

Atmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...

 over the southern Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 or the Antarctic

Antarctic

The Antarctic is the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica and the ice shelves, waters and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence...

. It was the second consecutive failure of a Taurus rocket, following the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory

Orbiting Carbon Observatory

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is a NASA satellite mission intended to provide global space-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide . The original spacecraft was lost in a launch failure on February 24, 2009, when the payload fairing of the Taurus rocket which was carrying it failed to...

in 2009.