Shuttle Flight No Big Secret to Space Buffs, Journal Says

Amateur radio operators and astronomers closely tracked the supposedly secret flight of the space shuttle Atlantis last week, listening in on cockpit conversations and photographing the deployment of the shuttle’s classified spy satellite cargo, according to a reliable trade journal.

Although NASA and the Air Force said that all shuttle-to-ground communications would be in code on secure radio channels, radio operators were able to listen to shuttle transmissions that were not encoded on easily accessible UHF (Ultra High Frequency) channels, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports in its Dec. 12 issue.

And while officials would not comment on the shuttle’s payload, a network of computer-linked amateur astronomers around the globe watched and took photographs as the Atlantis astronauts deployed a giant Lacrosse radar satellite on the first day of the spacecraft’s four-day flight, the magazine said.

The magazine published a photo that appears to show the Atlantis orbiter and the spy satellite flying in tandem about a mile apart. The photograph was taken by an astronomer in Denver as the spacecraft passed overhead on its seventh orbit.

Air Force officials refused to confirm or deny the magazine’s account, saying that details of the flight remain classified.

But an Air Force spokesman said that all radio broadcasts on classified Defense Department missions are supposed to be encrypted and that sending radio traffic “in the clear” would be a breach of established practice.

The Atlantis took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 2 on a four-day, nine-hour flight that ended in a perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert on Tuesday. The ship presumably launched the Lacrosse satellite, a sophisticated eye-in-the-sky built to spy on Soviet military activities at night and in all conditions of weather.

Discusses Two Problems

The magazine reported two problems with the flight. NASA engineers detected debris falling from the spaceship about the same time that the solid rocket boosters separated from the shuttle and its fuel tank. Once the craft was safely in orbit, the astronauts used a camera on the end of the shuttle’s robot arm to inspect the underside of the ship, where they discovered missing heat-shield tiles.

NASA officials suspect that the tiles were knocked off by breakaway pieces of the insulation from the external liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel tank, the magazine said.

Satellite Panels

A second problem arose when the five astronauts launched the $500-million reconnaissance satellite. The satellite’s massive solar panels at first failed to unfold properly when the spy craft was lifted from the shuttle’s cargo bay about seven hours into the flight.

Astronauts were prepared to conduct a space walk to free up the panels, which unfurl to a wingspan of 150 feet, but a second set of radio commands to the satellite fixed the problem, Aviation Week said.