Shuttle, Military Satellite Lift Off in Nighttime Launch

The space shuttle Discovery ascended into space Wednesday night, emblazoning the cloudless black Florida sky in an awesome display of candlepower visible from Cuba to central Georgia.

It carried into orbit a secret military spy satellite and, among other things, a package of baseball cards.

The flawless 7:23 p.m. launch, only the third after-dark liftoff in 32 shuttle missions, left spectators agape. The giant rocket rode a 700-foot tail of golden fire that was still clearly visible when the craft was more than 160 miles over the Atlantic.

“It’s a real gangbusters show,” said normally taciturn Dick Young, spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

A NASA spokeswoman narrated the ship’s first eight minutes of flight, but all public communications were cut off after that for military security reasons.

NASA officials said the agency would supply periodic updates during the mission but would not describe any of the astronauts’ classified activities.

The Discovery launch was the seventh successful shuttle liftoff since the Challenger disaster of January, 1986, and the fifth classified Defense Department shuttle mission overall.

At the controls of the spaceship was Air Force Col. Frederick D. Gregory, 48, the first black to command a shuttle mission. He leads a four-man, one-woman crew on what is expected to be a four-day space voyage scheduled to end with a night landing at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California on Sunday.

The astronauts will enjoy, perhaps, a Thanksgiving dinner in space today of “thermostabilized” turkey and gravy, rehydratable shrimp cocktail, broccoli au gratin, peach ambrosia, macadamia nuts and powdered lemonade.

The exact launch time was kept secret until nine minutes before liftoff to thwart monitoring by Soviet ships and satellites.

Outside experts speculated that the flight’s schedule calls for deploying the secret satellite at night to make it more difficult for the Soviets to observe, or that other experiments aboard the ship had to be conducted in darkness above certain parts of the globe.

The shuttle’s cargo, although officially classified, was believed to be a Mentor electronic intelligence satellite, identical to a satellite code-named Magnum launched on the shuttle in January, 1985.

Civilian space experts with reliable sources in NASA and the intelligence community said the satellite is designed to monitor Soviet missile launches and eavesdrop on all types of radio communications.

Navy Capt. Manley Lanier (Sonny) Carter Jr., 42, carried a handful of baseball cards into space on behalf of Dodgers greats Roy Campanella and Ralph Branca, whom he met last year at the Dodgers training camp in Florida.

The other astronauts are:

Air Force Col. John E. Blaha, 47, co-pilot, making his second shuttle flight this year. He replaced the mission’s original co-pilot, astronaut S. David Griggs, who was killed in a private plane crash in June.

F. Story Musgrave, 54, a medical doctor and experienced astronaut with two previous space flights.

Kathryn C. Thornton, 37, the first female and one of only two civilians ever assigned to a military shuttle flight. She is an expert in nuclear physics and a five-year veteran of the astronaut corps. This is her first shuttle mission.