The NRO built and operated large, expensive reconnaissance satellites, and it wanted a bigger shuttle cargo bay than NASA had planned. Why not?īecause STS-27 was-and remains-a secret mission.īetween 19, NASA launched 11 shuttle flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal that dated to 1969, when the National Reconnaissance Office-an organization so secret its name could not be published at the time-requested certain changes to the design of NASA’s new space transportation system. We don’t know because not a word of the ONYX rescue was reported in newspapers or on television. The astronauts may just as well have fixed the satellite without a spacewalk by Ross and Shepherd. intelligence community.Īt least that’s one possible scenario for what happened. As it turned out, they succeeded in grabbing, fixing, and re-releasing ONYX, for which they later received a medal from the U.S. Without intervention by the crew, the billion-dollar satellite would become a hunk of space junk. But shortly after the astronauts released the spacecraft, called ONYX, from the shuttle’s cargo bay, on December 2, 1988, one of its antenna dishes had failed to open.
#Did a space shuttle launch today series#
The mission of STS-27 had been to deploy the first in a series of new spy satellites that used radar to observe ground targets, in any kind of weather, day or night. Downstairs in the airlock, mission specialists Jerry Ross and Bill Shepherd waited in their spacesuits for Gibson’s order to go outside and attempt a rescue. Commander Hoot Gibson and pilot Guy Gardner flew the approach, while mission specialist Mike Mullane, at the other end of the flight deck, readied the shuttle’s robot arm for a capture.
The giant gold and silver satellite glittered against the black sky as space shuttle Atlantis closed in on it from below.
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