Top Secret Space Shuttle Missions

[Blackstar]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3302/1

Black ops and the shuttle (part 2): Reconnaissance missions in the space shuttle, from WASP to ZEUS
by Dwayne Day
Monday, August 7, 2017

The nearest communities to Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast are Lompoc and Santa Maria. Although not exactly sleepy little towns, nobody would mistake them for bustling communities: the most significant industries are flowers and the federal penitentiary. But things would have gone differently if the space shuttle had ever started flying out of Space Launch Complex-6 (“Slick-6”) at Vandenberg. Not only would the base have gained a lot of work processing shuttles and the sophisticated payloads that used them, but tens of thousands of tourists would have flooded into the area to watch the launches, giving a shot of adrenaline to the local economies each time. Many of the launches would have been classified, but notices would have gone out that they were occurring, and tourists would have shown up. That certainly would have happened if ZEUS had ever appeared.

The public would not have known it was called ZEUS. And in fact, the name probably would have been changed if the program had ever become operational. ZEUS was a late 1970s plan by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office, which operated the United States’ highly classified intelligence satellites, to mount a powerful camera system inside the shuttle’s payload bay and launch out of Vandenberg perhaps four times a year. One variant of ZEUS would have operated from the payload bay during a shuttle mission lasting up to three weeks, whereas a later version would have been deployed into low Earth orbit in groups of three hockey-puck shaped satellites, which might have been serviced in orbit on following flights. If it had been given the go-ahead, perhaps a majority of the shuttle launches from California would have carried ZEUS payloads into orbit.

But ZEUS never got to fly, the space shuttle never launched from Vandenberg, and the local communities never got to bask in the glory of a space shuttle rising on pillars of flame over the mountains of the Pacific Coast.

[Blackstar]

[Blackstar]

Black ops and the shuttle (part 1)
On-orbit servicing and recovery of the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite
by Dwayne Day
Monday, February 13, 2017

In December 1993, the space shuttle Endeavour rendezvoused with the Hubble Space Telescope to conduct one of the most high-profile missions of the entire shuttle program. Over the next ten days, the crew of mission STS-61 installed corrective optics to fix the Hubble’s flawed vision, replaced instruments and gyroscopes and solar panels, and sent Hubble off as practically a new telescope.
The space shuttle was more than simply a replacement for the Titan III. The shuttle offered many opportunities for improving the HEXAGON’s design.

Twenty years earlier, the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that operated America’s fleet of intelligence satellites evaluated the possibility of doing this kind of mission on a regular basis with the largest reconnaissance satellite then in the inventory, the schoolbus-sized HEXAGON. The NRO and its contractors studied refurbishment and resupply of satellites in orbit, as well as recovery and refurbishment on the ground, considering the value and the drawbacks—and, most importantly, the costs—of resurrecting expired intelligence spacecraft.

This was the first of many studies over the next decade initiated by the NRO to evaluate adapting its various intelligence satellites to use the Space Transportation System. Much of the history of the NRO’s involvement in the space shuttle program remains classified. But many new details are emerging about this period and particularly the NRO’s largest, and most important spacecraft at the time.

[Star One]

Thanks for those articles.

[brahmanknight]

This might be my favorite piece from you, yet. 

[Archibald]

Hans Mark was really a curious man. I think he was under influence of von Braun and had a little too much love for manned spaceflight. Some decisions he made at Ames (he was the center director from 1969 - 77), NRO and later as NASA deputy administrator were controversials.

I often wonder why the Pioneer probe program was dropped after Pioneer-Venus ?

[Archibald]

Nice article, by the way. Interesting as usual. Can't wait for part 3 - bringing spent KH-9s down to Earth.

Should give some limited hindsight about how hard it would have been to bring Hubble to Earth (as was more or less planned before STS-107).

[Star One]

Hans Mark was really a curious man. I think he was under influence of von Braun and had a little too much love for manned spaceflight. Some decisions he made at Ames (he was the center director from 1969 - 77), NRO and later as NASA deputy administrator were controversials.

I often wonder why the Pioneer probe program was dropped after Pioneer-Venus ?

He only seems curious to you because you obviously disagree with some of the decisions he made.

[Jim]

Not really.  HST was designed for it.  Just grab it and remove solar arrays

[Jim]

Hans Mark was really a curious man. I think he was under influence of von Braun and had a little too much love for manned spaceflight. Some decisions he made at Ames (he was the center director from 1969 - 77), NRO and later as NASA deputy administrator were controversials.

I often wonder why the Pioneer probe program was dropped after Pioneer-Venus ?

He only seems curious to you because you obviously disagree with some of the decisions he made.

It had nothing to do with Mark

[Blackstar]

1-Nice article, by the way. Interesting as usual.

2-Can't wait for part 3 - bringing spent KH-9s down to Earth.

3-Should give some limited hindsight about how hard it would have been to bring Hubble to Earth (as was more or less planned before STS-107).

1-Thank you, that is most kind.

2-Part 3 is now 99% written, but I need to edit it some more. Once ZEUS was canceled, the plan was to use the KH-11 KENNEN satellites (apparently Block 2 versions) to fly at higher apogees and provide the area search imagery that had been provided by HEXAGON since 1971. However, it seems that there were some in the NRO who were concerned about a gap in coverage before that happened. They may also (we don't know) have been concerned that the KENNEN solution might not have worked. So in 1982 they proposed to recover the last HEXAGONs and re-fly them a single time (launching on a Titan 34D).

There was a proposal to recover #18, which was then scheduled for launch in 1983. And there were also proposals to recover #19 and #20, then scheduled for launch in 1984 and 1985. The #18 recovery would have had to occur in 1984, before Vandenberg's SLC-6 was available, thus requiring a polar launch from the Cape. This would have involved dropping the SRBs off of Daytona Beach and the shuttle flying inland, eventually flying over Cleveland, Ohio. This proposal was active as of August 1982. It was rejected. The proposal to recover #19 or #20 was also rejected. The launch of HEXAGON #20 was delayed from 1985 to 1986, but available records are unclear why it was delayed. One possible reason for the delay was that they wanted to have more overlap between the last HEXAGON launch and the debut of the KENNEN Block 2 spacecraft. After the loss of HEXAGON #20 in April 1986 (it blew up over the launch pad) there was a contractor proposal to fly the HEXAGON development camera in the shuttle payload bay. This was rejected by the NRO.

3-Hubble was always designed for shuttle launch. HEXAGON was designed for Titan IIID (later 34D) launch. One of the interesting things about HEXAGON is that it apparently did not require much redesign for shuttle launch or recovery. There were a number of minor systems changes (retractable or jettisonable solar panels, for instance, moving a couple of antennas, adding a grapple fixture), but for the most part the spacecraft could be adapted to shuttle. One change is that they would have gone to water recovery for the Satellite Reentry Vehicles if they re-flew the HEXAGON. The reason is that they were going to shut down the C-130 recovery squadron in Hawaii.

One interesting change is that if they had ever launched a HEXAGON on a shuttle, the vehicle would have faced down in the payload bay (cameras and SRVs pointed toward the floor). But if they recovered a used HEXAGON in orbit, it would have faced up in the payload bay (see image). Without the heavy SRVs to worry about, they would have recovered it with the HEXAGON forebody closer to the payload bay floor, lowering the CG.

[Blackstar]

Hans Mark was really a curious man. I think he was under influence of von Braun and had a little too much love for manned spaceflight. Some decisions he made at Ames (he was the center director from 1969 - 77), NRO and later as NASA deputy administrator were controversials.

Mark is a bit of an enigma. Mark published a book in 1987 titled The Space Station, a Personal Journey, in which he discussed his involvement with the shuttle when he was serving as Secretary of the Air Force. Mark wrote the book at a time when the NRO was still classified, so he could not acknowledge his connection with that organization. He wrote:

"During my service in the Pentagon from 1977 to 1981, I tried to modify the policies of the Air Force toward the Space Shuttle. One thing I tried to do was to urge people to design their spacecraft in such a way that full advantage would be taken of the capability of the Space Shuttle. I was partially successful in doing this, and certain spacecraft were designed to take full advantage of the payload capacity of the shuttle and of the volume of the payload bay. (It is interesting that seven years earlier the design of the shuttle was, of course, developed in such a way that just these things could be done.) In addition, I also succeeded in getting some of the people in the Air Force to think about the possibility of building their spacecraft in such a way that they could be retrieved and then refurbished and used again. There was even the possibility of repairing, replenishing, and maintaining spacecraft on orbit by using the ability of the shuttle crews to go out and perform extravehicular activities."


I have heard from a couple of people that Mark was not liked at NRO, apparently because of his shuttle interest. I believe that somebody also told me that Mark was good at not leaving his fingerprints on key decisions. I've never met him.

[Archibald]

The reason is that they were going to shut down the C-130 recovery squadron in Hawaii.

Why would it be shut down ?
Seems as if somebody decided - enough capsules, the KH-11 can do both KH-8 and KH-9 jobs without any expensive C-130 recovery squadron.

[Blackstar]

The reason is that they were going to shut down the C-130 recovery squadron in Hawaii.

Why would it be shut down ?
Seems as if somebody decided - enough capsules, the KH-11 can do both KH-8 and KH-9 jobs without any expensive C-130 recovery squadron.

It was expensive. They had something like 10 C-130s, 6 helicopters, and over 500 personnel. And they had a high state of operational readiness, which meant that the had a high budget (for spare parts and stuff). GAMBIT was retired in 1984. HEXAGON was originally supposed to have its last flight in 1985, but it was postponed to 1986. When the shuttle recovery was being discussed in 1982, I presume that the reentry vehicle recovery squadron was going to be disbanded in 1985 or 1986. So they were planning for that--if they did a HEXAGON recovery by shuttle in 1986, then the HEXAGON would not re-fly until 1987 or later. It would not make sense to keep the recovery squadron active for several years with nothing to recover.

[zubenelgenubi]

The reason is that they were going to shut down the C-130 recovery squadron in Hawaii.

Why would it be shut down ?
Seems as if somebody decided - enough capsules, the KH-11 can do both KH-8 and KH-9 jobs without any expensive C-130 recovery squadron.

It was expensive. They had something like 10 C-130s, 6 helicopters, and over 500 personnel. And they had a high state of operational readiness, which meant that the had a high budget (for spare parts and stuff).
<snip>

Did the recovery squadron have a "cover" mission?

[Archibald]

They had something like 10 C-130s, 6 helicopters

That's quite a fleet indeed. Some European countries have transport fleets that are smaller than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Air_Transport_Wing

[Jim]

The reason is that they were going to shut down the C-130 recovery squadron in Hawaii.

Why would it be shut down ?
Seems as if somebody decided - enough capsules, the KH-11 can do both KH-8 and KH-9 jobs without any expensive C-130 recovery squadron.

It was expensive. They had something like 10 C-130s, 6 helicopters, and over 500 personnel. And they had a high state of operational readiness, which meant that the had a high budget (for spare parts and stuff).
<snip>

Did the recovery squadron have a "cover" mission?

No.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6593d_Test_Squadron
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6594th_Test_Group

[Blackstar]

The retirees group is here:

http://6594thtestgroup.org/

http://www.nro.gov/history/csnr/corona/StarCatchersWeb.pdf

That history only goes up to 1972 and the end of CORONA. I wish they had continued it to the end of the unit. But there is this:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-2/pdfs/Waltrop-Catching%20the%20End%20of%20an%20Era-June2014.pdf

[rguser]

There appears to be a problem with the photo on page 11 of the article titled "Catching the End of an Era" as the text describing the photo implies that it is the catch of HEXAGON mission 1219-3.  Unfortunately, it appears to be of a dummy practice test item and not an actual Mark 8 RV.  The catch-cone is not the one used on an actual Mark 8 RV and the "bucket's" shape is not that of a Mark 8 film bucket.

[zubenelgenubi]

As a side-note, I enjoyed the Babylon 5 references that Dwayne used to work into his article titles for The Space Review.

I hope it would be possible to continue that theme, if the author desires?

Just a thought.

[Blackstar]

As a side-note, I enjoyed the Babylon 5 references that Dwayne used to work into his article titles for The Space Review.

I hope it would be possible to continue that theme, if the author desires?

Just a thought.

Wow, somebody actually noticed?! (I've also used song lyrics and book titles in the past.)

I have in the works a lengthy article--probably not for The Space Review--about the unique GAMBIT Dual Mode mission of 1982. The title is "All Alone in the Night."

[Arch Admiral]

Sometime in late 1977 I was at a social event in Honolulu that was mostly astronomers - except for one obviously military guy whose shirt said "6594th Test Group" in big letters, and the unit's (unofficial) insignia. I remember someone asked him "Are there 6,593 other Test Groups?".

The only thing covert about these units was that they didn't have a press officer cranking out releases about every minor event. Since Hickham AFB and Honolulu International Airport share the same runways and taxiways, their aircraft were taking off and landing in plain view of thousands of tourists all the time. And the big tracking antenna radome on top made it clear that they weren't ordinary Hercs. These planes should have been located at NAS Barbers Point alongside the Navy's secret units, but of course interservice rivalry prevented that.

[Jim]

The insignia was official.
Radomes?. JC-130 didn't have them.

[Opie]

No, but the HC-130s used to refuel the Jolly's did.

[Blackstar]

Sometime in late 1977 I was at a social event in Honolulu that was mostly astronomers - except for one obviously military guy whose shirt said "6594th Test Group" in big letters, and the unit's (unofficial) insignia. I remember someone asked him "Are there 6,593 other Test Groups?".

The only thing covert about these units was that they didn't have a press officer cranking out releases about every minor event. Since Hickham AFB and Honolulu International Airport share the same runways and taxiways, their aircraft were taking off and landing in plain view of thousands of tourists all the time. And the big tracking antenna radome on top made it clear that they weren't ordinary Hercs. These planes should have been located at NAS Barbers Point alongside the Navy's secret units, but of course interservice rivalry prevented that.

The unit's connection to recovering satellite capsules was openly acknowledged with the Discoverer 14 catch back in 1961. It was an open secret what they did, and the fact that they were still doing it in 1984 was a tip off that it was an important mission. I think that monitoring the unit's activities would have been a good indication that they were conducting recovery operations. They usually sent quite a few planes out for each recovery, so launching a whole bunch of C-130s would have been a sign. That said, the planes spaced out a bit, so they might have launched three and then another three an hour later, so it would have required some careful monitoring.

[Jim]

No, but the HC-130s used to refuel the Jolly's did.

They were less than 30% of the test group's fleet and weren't used on every recovery.

[Jester]

The insignia was official.
Radomes?. JC-130 didn't have them.

some did.
http://6594thtestgroup.org/images/57-0526.jpg

[Blackstar]

The insignia was official.
Radomes?. JC-130 didn't have them.

some did.
http://6594thtestgroup.org/images/57-0526.jpg

Wasn't that direction finder equipment? I think that was antennas for picking up the radio beacon from the SRVs as they descended.

By the way, that test group's records have been preserved and are at Peterson AFB. I went through some of them a number of years ago. There was some neat stuff in there, but they were not set up to support researchers. They had things like reports on the recovery rigs installed inside the aircraft and a few mishap reports. I remember one report about how they caught an SRV--probably a training flight--and it actually flew up on its cable above the aircraft (although this would have been behind the aircraft). I don't think the report explained why that happened, but I would guess that the pilot did something wrong in his approach.

[Blackstar]

http://thespacereview.com/article/3390/1

Black ops and the shuttle (part 3-1): Recovering spent HEXAGON reconnaissance satellites with the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, December 11, 2017


The James Bond movie You Only Live Twice started with a covert satellite sneaking up on an American spacecraft in orbit, swallowing it like an alligator and smuggling it back to Earth. But by the early 1980s, the American National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) began contemplating launching a space shuttle north out of Florida, dropping its solid rocket boosters off of Daytona Beach, and heading inland over the mid-Atlantic states overflying Cleveland, Ohio, and Canada. Once in orbit, it would open its payload bay doors, grab hold of a top-secret American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite the size of a school bus, and bring it back to Earth. It was an audacious plan, not only because it would overfly the American and Canadian landmasses on its way to orbit, but also because it would first show up on Soviet radar as it rose over the North Pole—and they might be a little upset. “The political problems were agreed to be most difficult,” an NRO memo declared with remarkable understatement.

[Hog]

Wow, a Polar launch to the North from Florida. 

1)Since the Orbiter is launching "light", aside from the cradle would actually cradle "Big-Bird", and landing "heavy" would the standard issue 4 segment SRBs be sufficient for a Northern launch from KSC?  The FWCs were needed for Polar launches to the South from SLC-6, Cali, to take sufficient cargo to orbit.

2)Drop the boosters off of Daytona Beach, where would the ET release take place?  The pictured trajectory goes directly over my house in Southern Ontario, Canada. One of the most densely populated areas of Canada is a roughly 100km to the East. After that though, actual population density is very sparse.  We OK'd Canadian launch vehicles to be fielded to launch US nuclear anti-aircraft warheads and we OK'd US cruise missile tests over Canadian soil. I'd guess that the political hurdles with Canada wouldn't be the "No-Go" political issue, but I could be totally wrong. I'd think the Classified status of the mission would help in this respect.

A quick look at the launch path map, it appears that there is a target rich environment for whatever the equivalent of the ECAL/BDA(East Coast Abort Landing/BermuDa Abort) capability was in a post-Challenger world.  RTLS(Return To Launch Site) abort planning would be "interesting" to say the least.

And yes, the Soviets would have a serious "blip" on their screens as the stack came up "over the pole". And being a classified mission, launch details would be classified, so a friendly call to the Kremlin would be out of the question.  This is one instance where forewarning of a launch, while blowing a portion of that missions OPSEC, can actually protect the PERSEC of your nations populace.  There are numerous examples of initial reports of missile launches of various scales, on both sides.ie-the 1983 Soviet incident involving the Soviet Oko satellites(Molniya/GSO) which mistook sunlight interacting with high altitude clouds as a US missile attack.

Apollo–Soyuz Test Project flew in mid-1975.
3)Any idea what year this STS/Hexagon presentation was first given?

Thanks for posting Blackstar, fascinating stuff.  That Space Shuttle had many possible uses.

[Arch Admiral]

This idea that a polar-orbit launch over the North Pole could be mistaken for an ICBM attack crops up all the time, but it is completely mistaken. The ICBM minimum-energy trajectory is about 600 miles up as it crosses the pole and can't be mistaken for a LEO launch that will be less than 150 miles up. The ICBM will pop up over the radar horizon at a much longer range, and a short tracking arc quickly determines the impact point. The orbital target, of course, has no predicted impact point.

The only confusion might arise with a depressed-trajectory or fractional-orbit system. The only such system was the Soviet 9K69 "R-36O" Global Rocket which was deployed in 18 silos at Baikonur from 1969 to 1983. This put its 5MT warhead into a very low orbit over the SOUTH pole, and brought it down on target with a retro-rocket. Its location at Baikonur suggest that its designers actually did hope that its launches would be misidentified as an orbital launch -- but I have never seen this claim in print.

[Blackstar]

The second half of part 3 ran earlier this week:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3394/1

I'm now done with that series. My plan is that I'll stitch all those articles together, add in footnotes, and then probably publish it in Quest magazine. I'd actually like to add more to the first part, about in-orbit servicing of the HEXAGON, because there's a great 1973 study on that. Very complicated, and you can see why they rejected it. But really fascinating.

[Hog]

This idea that a polar-orbit launch over the North Pole could be mistaken for an ICBM attack crops up all the time, but it is completely mistaken. The ICBM minimum-energy trajectory is about 600 miles up as it crosses the pole and can't be mistaken for a LEO launch that will be less than 150 miles up. The ICBM will pop up over the radar horizon at a much longer range, and a short tracking arc quickly determines the impact point. The orbital target, of course, has no predicted impact point.

The only confusion might arise with a depressed-trajectory or fractional-orbit system. The only such system was the Soviet 9K69 "R-36O" Global Rocket which was deployed in 18 silos at Baikonur from 1969 to 1983. This put its 5MT warhead into a very low orbit over the SOUTH pole, and brought it down on target with a retro-rocket. Its location at Baikonur suggest that its designers actually did hope that its launches would be misidentified as an orbital launch -- but I have never seen this claim in print.

You are using sane deduction free from paranoia, thinking that wasn't always used during the Cold War.

[Archibald]

You are using sane deduction free from paranoia, thinking that wasn't always used during the Cold War.

Yuri Andropov had been chairman of the KGB since 1967, and had spent his entire profesional life within the KGB. And yes he was paranoid, plus its kidneys where dying, which did not helped either.