This particular launch was important to a lot of people. It was the first launch from United Launch Alliance (ULA) which was a team of Lockheed-Martin and Boeing that was formed in the wake of the EELV fiasco. People were interested in seeing if the two could play nice together after all the litigation that occured because of the way Boeing won the contract.

The other part that got a lot of attention was that this satellite was viewed as an emergency capability gap filler. The Boeing Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) satellelites were suppose to be launched in 2005. People were suprised Boeing won the contract because their experience with satellites was limited to communications and launch vehicles. This launch was seen as validation that the FIA program was unsustainable and vindication for everybody that was saying that Lockheed-Martin should have received the contract from the start.

It raised a lot of eyebrows when communication with the satellite was never achieved. The only thing known about it was that it reached the intended orbit successfully (the first successful launch by ULA). In the commercial world, satellites are tested by the builders before the controls are handed over to the owner. In this case, that step would never have happened if it wasn't an USG satellite.

The visibility on this launch is pretty extraordinary for a Classified launch. Because of all the people interested, I would be surprised if anything they said about the satellite failing wasn't completely true.