Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-28

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: August 11, 2014 2:25:06 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-28

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
August 9th, 2014
'Constrained Arrangement': 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-28 (Part 1)
By Ben Evans

Pictured during her rollout to Pad 39B, Columbia was embarking on her first flight since the Challenger disaster. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Astronaut Dick Richards was five weeks from his first launch into space when the Challenger disaster cruelly snatched the opportunity from him. In January 1985, Richards had been named as Jon McBride's pilot for Mission 61E, the ASTRO-1 science mission, scheduled for early the following March to observe Halley's Comet and a multitude of astronomical targets. When Challenger lifted off on Mission 51L on 28 January 1986, McBride and Richards were in their seats in the simulator at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, working launch aborts. They briefly paused to step outside to watch their friends on the Challenger roar into space. Seventy-three seconds later, McBride and Richards' mission vanished in a heartbeat, the shuttle program fell to its knees, and the NASA astronaut corps would never be the same again. Twenty-five years ago, this week, Richards made it to space with another crew, but the shuttle program would be a very different one.
In fact, the careers of Richards and Challenger's pilot, Mike Smith, were entwined in many ways. For starters, they were the only two U.S. Navy pilots selected by NASA in its May 1980 astronaut class, and they had both been assigned to their first missions at the same time; Smith was paired with Dick Scobee and Richards with McBride. At first, it seemed to Richards that the pairings might happen the other way around. "I started getting all these simulation flights with Dick Scobee," he remembered in his NASA oral history interview, and this led him to wonder if they were being primed for a mission assignment. Then, a few weeks later, Smith started doing simulations with Scobee and Richards began working extensively with McBride. Years later, Richards believed that delays to the long-awaited first shuttle launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., may have led to the decision. It would certainly be ironic to suppose that a simple quirk of fate and timing might have kept Richards from losing his life on Challenger's final mission.
Many of the classified shuttle missions included similar motifs on their official crew patches: the American Eagle and the patriotic red, white, and blue of the U.S. flag. The surnames of the STS-28 crew are visible around the perimeter. Image Credit: NASA
It is interesting that Richards' 15-year career as an astronaut was already two-thirds over before he actually made it into space. The weeks and months after Challenger were devastating and one of his hardest jobs was supporting Mike Smith's widow, Jane, in her grief. Two years later, in February 1988, he finally received assignment as pilot on STS-28, a classified Department of Defense assignment. The crew that he would be joining had actually been assigned to Mission 61N in December 1985, although the pilot for that flight, Mike McCulley, was substituted for Richards. Commander Brewster Shaw would be joined by mission specialists Jim Adamson, Dave Leestma—who retired from NASA earlier in 2014, after more than three decades of service—and Mark Brown.
With the pressure on getting Discovery and Atlantis into space before the end of 1988, on the STS-26 Return to Flight and classified STS-27 Department of Defense missions, Columbia found herself last in the queue and her launch was delayed until July and eventually the second week of August in the following year. However, despite being her first post-Challenger mission, the curtain of secrecy surrounding STS-28 showed no sign of being drawn back. Not until many years later would a few details of exactly what Brewster Shaw's crew did in space finally begin to trickle out.
For his part, Dave Leestma described preparations for these top-secret missions as unusual and very cloak-and-dagger in nature. "Sometimes you had to disguise where you were going," he said. "You'd file a flight plan in a T-38 [for] one place and go somewhere else, to try to not leave a trail for where you were going or what you were doing, who was the sponsor of this payload or what its capabilities were or what it was going to do. You had to be careful, all the time, of what you were saying." STS-28 would transport the Department of Defense's fourth major shuttle payload into orbit, but in the wake of Challenger the U.S. intelligence community began to reduce its reliance on the reusable fleet of orbiters by reverting to expendable boosters. Only payloads which were too large, too heavy, or too awkward to be reconfigured for an expendable launch remained on the shuttle. "The DoD did not like dealing with NASA," said Leestma. "It was a constrained arrangement, but it worked very well and the DoD was happy with the product that they got in the end."
The STS-28 crew departs the Operations & Checkout Building, bound for the pad and Columbia on the morning of 8 August 1989. Left to right are Mark Brown, Jim Adamson, Dave Leestma, Dick Richards, and Brewster Shaw. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
It had long since become standard practice in the build-up to such missions that the countdown was conducted in almost complete secrecy, with the public affairs commentary starting when Columbia emerged from the T-9 minute hold. Only after this point were the gathered spectators able to listen in to clipped intercom exchanges between the crew and launch controllers. A software problem caused the clock to be held for longer than planned, and a combination of haze and fog over the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) meant that STS-28 set off 40 minutes late at 8:37 a.m. EDT on 8 August 1989. Watching from the VIP area was NASA Deputy Administrator J.R. Thompson, who declared "We're off to a good start on this mission." Considering that the flight was historic, as the space agency's flagship orbiter spread her wings once again, the official announcement from spokesman Brian Welch was flat and businesslike: Two hours after launch, he said, Shaw's crew had been given a "Go" for orbital operations.
That was it.
The next five days would be similarly shrouded in secrecy and rumor.

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
August 10th, 2014
'The Worst Tasting Coffee': 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-28 (Part 2)
By Ben Evans

Columbia rockets into orbit on the first (and only) wholly classified mission of her career. Photo Credit: NASA
Twenty-five years ago, this week, the Shuttle Columbia returned to flight, following a three-year down time in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. Aboard STS-28 for a five-day flight were Commander Brewster Shaw, Pilot Dick Richards, and Mission Specialists Jim Adamson, Dave Leestma—who retired from NASA earlier in 2014, after more than three decades of service—and Mark Brown, tasked with deploying a classified payload on behalf of the Department of Defense. In keeping with the mission, STS-28 was (and still is) largely shrouded in secrecy, and it was not for many years that a tiny chink opened to reveal a handful of sketchy details of what Shaw and his crew did in orbit.
As described in yesterday's AmericaSpace's history article, the relationship between NASA and the Department of Defense was a constrained one, particularly in view of the intense public attention which the shuttle attracted. In the wake of the loss of Challenger, most classified payloads were transferred onto expendable boosters and only the handful which were too large, too heavy, or too awkward to reconfigure retained their places on the reusable orbiters. Following STS-28's successful liftoff on 8 August 1989, its primary payload was deployed into space about 7.5 hours into the mission. At the time, John Pike, a space policy analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, speculated that this payload was a massive, 32,000-pound (14,500-kg) KH-12 satellite, one of the latest generation of "Key Hole" photographic reconnaissance platforms, whose ancestry stretched back to the 1960s. Pike commented that the KH-12 was one of the Pentagon's most expensive payloads—with an estimated price tag in the region of $1 billion, per unit—although other sources argued that STS-28's cargo might have been a lighter Strategic Reconnaissance Satellite (SRS). Still others speculated that it was capable of maneuvering itself to an orbital altitude of around 300 miles (480 km), from which vantage point it could take photographs with a resolution as fine as 3.3 feet (1 meter).
More recently, it has come to light that the payload was probably a member of the second-generation Satellite Data System (SDS-B), a family of U.S. Air Force telecommunications platforms. In fact, doubts over whether it was a KH-12 were raised within weeks of the launch, when ground-based observers noted that the satellite "flashed," as sunlight reflected from its solar panels, at regular intervals. This phenomenon, they concluded, was not normally consistent with a reconnaissance system. Certainly, it was not deployed by the shuttle's Canadian-built Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm, which was not carried on STS-28, and the first photographs of an SDS-B entered the public arena in the spring of 1998, when the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) released images and videotapes of a pair of military satellites. One was identified as an SDS-B, and Hughes was acknowledged as its prime contractor. Physically, it was not dissimilar to the Syncom/Leasat payloads already deployed on earlier shuttle flights, but somewhat longer. In a 2009 article for Air & Space magazine, Michael Cassutt quoted an Air Force officer who was familiar with the SDS-B project. "It's strange," the officer told Cassutt, "to work on a secret project for ten years, then see it on network television!"
Artist's concept of the second-generation Satellite Data System (SDS-B) spacecraft bus. Image Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
The Air Force began to develop the first-generation SDS in 1973 to provide America's intelligence community with a network of orbiting relays, capable of transmitting real-time data and images from reconnaissance satellites which were out of range of ground stations. Another of their responsibilities was to support voice and data communications for covert military activities. The second-generation SDS-B—which first flew on STS-28—operated in high-apogee and low-perigee orbits, ranging from as close as 300 miles (480 km) and as far as 23,600 miles (38,000 km), at steep inclinations which achieved their highest point over the northern hemisphere. This enabled them to cover two-thirds of the globe, relay spy satellite data of the entire Soviet land mass, and cover the entire north polar region in support of Air Force communications. Such wide coverage was not possible to geostationary-orbiting satellites. The SDS-B featured a pair of 14.7-foot-diameter (4.5-meter) dish antennas and a third, smaller dish for Ku-band downlink. Overall, the satellite measured 13 feet (4 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) wide, with a launch mass estimated at close to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg). In total, three of these cylindrical SDS-Bs were deployed by the shuttle, on STS-28, STS-38 in November 1990, and STS-53 in December 1992.
Although it is unclear as to how they were deployed, some observers have assumed that they were released in a similar fashion to the Syncoms, in a "frisbee" fashion. Others have noted that the solid-fueled rocket booster used for the SDS-B was an Orbus-21, physically identical to the motor later fitted to Intelsat 6-3 by spacewalking astronauts during STS-49 in May 1992. This has prompted alternative suggestions that the SDS-B was deployed "vertically" from a special cradle in the payload bay.
In whatever manner that SDS-B left Columbia, it is certain that the deployment was completed on the first day of the mission, because Shaw and Richards performed a separation manoeuvre at 4:58 p.m. EDT on 8 August 1989. A second payload, weighing just 275 pounds (125 kg), was also deployed and has been rumored to have been a kind of "ferret" satellite for radio and radar signals intelligence. The remainder of the mission went like clockwork, and the astronauts tended a number of military experiments in the middeck and a pair of Getaway Special (GAS) canisters in the payload bay.
The STS-28 crew comprised (clockwise from the top) Jim Adamson, Dave Leestma, Mark Brown, Dick Richards, and Brewster Shaw. Photo Credit: NASA
After 18 months training together, the men of STS-28 had developed into a close-knit team … despite being in different branches of the military. Richards and Leestma were U.S. Navy, Shaw and Brown were Air Force, and Adamson was the only Army member of the crew, but their common string was that they all shared a military background. "We were all cut from the same cloth," Richards remembered. "There wasn't too much that we needed to talk about. We all understood each other and so, from that sense, it was probably boring to the outsiders, but it was comfortable for us." Maintaining the requirements of the top-secret classification was a pain, although there were a handful of non-classified experiments … including an instrumental female skull, donated to research the penetration of radiation into the human cranium whilst in space. Hundreds of thermoluminescent dosimeters were mounted in the skull to record radiation levels, and it was flown twice more to measure the effects of different orbital altitudes and inclinations.
Five days after launch, at 6:37:08 a.m. PDT on 13 August, Brewster Shaw guided Columbia smoothly onto the dry lakebed Runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. "Super team and great machine," radioed Capcom Frank Culbertson as the vehicle rolled to a halt. Shaw, however, was not happy with his landing. On his last flight, Mission 61B in November-December 1985, he had touched down on the concrete Runway 22, which, with its well-defined boundaries, made it easier to judge sink rates and heights. On the dry lakebed, there were stripes to outline the runway, but it was not nearly as well defined and affected his depth perception. "When we came down and I flared the orbiter," he said, "I didn't know how high we were. Looking at the photographs, we weren't very high, but I basically leveled the vehicle off and then it floated."
The result was that Shaw allowed Columbia to "float" on her main gear for a substantial portion of her deceleration, before rotating the nose gear down onto the runway. "We got a lot of great data about low-speed flying qualities on the orbiter," he continued, "but it wasn't supposed to work out that way." Still, as Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Aaron Cohen remarked as he greeted the five astronauts, the effort to get Columbia flying again had been triumphantly achieved. She looked pretty dirty, to be fair, after her eighth voyage, but had suffered minimal damage and almost immediately began preparations for her next flight in December 1989.
Columbia touches down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on 13 August 1989, with a future coffee ingredient on her cockpit window. Photo Credit: NASA
For Dick Richards, one other anecdote stood out from the STS-28 re-entry. As Columbia passed through Mach 10—about 7,600 mph (12,250 km/h)—and super-heated air streamed across the vehicle, creating and depositing pockets and blobs of white-hot plasma, something splattered across one of his cockpit windows … and stayed there. After touchdown, he mentioned it to Don Puddy, the head of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD), and asked him to get one of the technicians to take a look at it. The substance, still in liquid form, was scooped up into a plastic coffee cup and taken away for analysis. That analysis was not quite what either man expected. A few days later, Richards caught up with Puddy.
"What did they say about what that material was?"
"You're not gonna believe this," Puddy replied with a grin and recounted the story. The technician had taken the coffee cup, filled with something from the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and placed it onto a counter. Without realizing, another technician had come along, grabbed the cup, poured coffee into it, and knocked it straight back.
"That," he said in disgust, "is the worst tasting coffee I've ever had!"
From that day to this, Richards never discovered what had deposited itself on his cockpit window at 10 times the speed of sound … but, in a new and somewhat dubious space "first," someone had at least tasted it.

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