Shuttle Atlantis Set for Secret Military Mission

The Air Force plans Thursday to inaugurate the fourth space shuttle, the Atlantis, with a secret mission that is expected to boost into orbit two satellites designed to relay missile-launching orders from the President to military commanders in the field.

Air Force officials are disclosing little about the flight and refused Monday to comment on the new spaceship’s top-secret cargo.

But statements by Pentagon officials in congressional testimony, data about the satellites and schedules for other shuttle flights dedicated to military uses point to Atlantis’ role in launching the military communications satellites. In addition, there have been suggestions that the flight will be used to conduct experiments in connection with the so-called “Star Wars” space missile defense program.

Latest of NASA Shuttles

The launch of the Atlantis will bring into service the final orbiter that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is authorized to build, joining Columbia, Challenger and Discovery. Along with Discovery, it has been strengthened to withstand the greater heat and stress it would face when launched into polar orbits from Vandenberg Air Force Base, although Thursday’s mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Thursday’s mission is the second dedicated entirely to Pentagon cargo. The first, on Jan. 24, launched a $300-million, secret military spy satellite, built to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union.

It is believed that the Atlantis will carry two satellites that will be parked in orbit about 22,300 miles over the Equator. The orbiters are known as Defense Satellite Communications Systems III, or DSCS III (pronounced discus).

John Pike, a space weapons expert on the staff of the Federation of American Scientists, described the DSCS III’s role as relatively routine when compared to the extremely sensitive and sophisticated mission of the spy satellite.

Relay War Orders

The DSCS III is intended to provide vital communications links between military command-and-control centers and U.S. forces scattered around the globe. In addition, it contains electronics equipment known as single-channel transponders, intended to relay emergency war orders from the national command authorities--beginning with the President--to strategic forces.

In the event of a nuclear attack launched by the United States, it would be one of the key links in the communications network that would be used “to tell the bombers and ICBMs to go,” Pike said.

By the early 1990s, the Air Force hopes to have obtained 14 of the satellites, according to testimony before Congress, thus installing a redundant system to protect the communications network against strikes by anti-satellite weapons.

The new satellites, expected to cost about $100 million each and made by General Electric, are intended to replace a decade-old system described by one Pentagon official as failing.

Donald Latham, deputy assistant secretary of defense, told the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee two years ago that the older satellites “are all approaching what everybody predicted would be their final death throes. Some already have subsystems that are burned out and things like that.”

In his testimony, he said that by 1986, only two of the older satellites were expected to be operating. He also had said the shuttle would be used to launch the new satellites, and the Air Force had said as early as 1981 that the first launch of the DSCS III on the shuttle was scheduled for mid-1985. Latham did not return a reporter’s telephone calls Monday.

Satellites ‘Hardened’

The new satellites have been protected, or “hardened,” against the effects of radiation to improve their chances of continuing to operate if exposed to a nuclear weapon explosion in space. In 1980, a model was said to have successfully passed an anti-radiation test during an underground nuclear explosion.

The Air Force, in refusing to disclose the anticipated launch time other than to list a three-hour period beginning at 7:20 a.m. PDT, believes that “knowledge of launch time, coupled with other flight information, would give an adversary parameters of the mission” and help in identifying the cargo, a spokesman said.

In addition to its anticipated mission of launching the DSCS, there were indications, Pike said, that the Atlantis would play a role in preliminary measurements that could be used in an anti-missile weapons system, if one is developed by the “Star Wars” program.

The measurements would be taken by an infrared sensor, known as a CIRRIS, and would collect data on the Earth’s atmospheric background and temperatures. A strategic defense system would use such data to help locate an enemy’s missiles upon launch, comparing the heat they emit to the atmospheric conditions when no missiles are soaring through space.