Los Alamos National Laboratory

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that its supercomputer platform Cielo has been approved for classified operations.
Cielo, which supports Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, is a petascale supercomputer that helps NNSA ensure the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile while maintaining the moratorium on underground nuclear explosive testing.

WASHINGTON  — 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.

Editor's Note: This is the third in a multi-part series.

An investigation began last summer as part of a March 2005 whistleblower lawsuit brought by former Los Alamos National Laboratory auditor Charles Montaño. The probe hit on a previously missing link that tied former LANL Deputy Director of Operations Richard Burick to Pete Bussolini, a former facilities maintenance manager at the lab.

For a brief moment last week, the Department of Energy pulled back the curtain – ever so slightly – on a clandestine team that’s used to operating under the radar inside Los Alamos National Laboratory and across the globe.

“We can’t tell you quite what they did, or exactly when they did it – but some people at the laboratory have earned the appreciation of DOE’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,” LANL spokesperson Nancy Ambrosiano said late Monday.