Oct 11 1985
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
American University professor Jeffrey Richelson, testifying at the espionage trial of former Navy intelligence analyst Samuel Morison, said publication in 1984 of three secret KH-11 spy satellite photos in Jane's Defense Weekly told the Soviets nothing important that they did not already know, the Washington Post reported. Morison, who worked at the Naval Intelligence Support center in Suitland, Maryland, had official approval for his part-time job as U.S. editor of Jane's Fighting Ships and in 1984 sent the weekly the three photos in hopes of securing a full-time job there. He was also indicted on charges of keeping in his apartment two classified documents about a May 1984 fire at a Soviet naval ammunition depot.
In his testimony, Richelson said the Soviets already had the KH-11 manual, which they had bought from a CIA officer, as well as earlier published satellite photos to show them how the system worked.
Government witnesses earlier testified that the photos sent to Jane's were potentially valuable to the Soviets in confirming the KH-11's sophisticated workings and in disclosing U.S. targeting interests. Similarly, a Navy intelligence expert testified that the details about the ammunition depot fires, also gleaned from satellite photos, were so precise that it would have been “very damaging” to the U.S. if the documents had been leaked.
Richelson, however, said public sources had provided much detail about the KH-11 and other satellite programs, such as their flight paths over the Soviet Union, their altitude (75 to 155 miles), and the fact that a Titan 3D rocket launched them and another so-called Keyhole satellite, the KH-9. He said it was well known that the KH-11 sent its pictures back to Washington in a matter of seconds via another satellite and that it passed over targets quite frequently.
Another defense witness, John Pike, associate director for space policy at the Federation of American Scientists, testified on what was publicly available about the KH-11, saying DOD would soon replace it with a longer-lasting KH-12. According to Pike, the KH-11 orbited the Soviet Union 11 times a day, had the capacity to take pictures continuously, and had a peripheral vision that could switch from extreme left to extreme right in an instant.
The Washington Post six days later reported that Morison was found guilty of espionage and theft and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000 on each of four counts. (W Post, Oct 12/85, A9, Oct 18/85, A1)
The Department of Defense (DOD) decided to drop the fee it planned to charge civilian users of the Navstar Global Positioning System, the Air Force System Command Newsreview reported. William Taft IV, deputy secretary of defense, said deleting the user fee was necessary to enhance worldwide aviation safety and to avoid charge difficulties. He said the standard positioning service signal, which would be the lower of two accuracy levels, would be broadcast in the clear and available to any properly equipped user. However, Congress could reinstate user fees.
The precise positioning service signal, the higher-accuracy signal, would be encrypted and made available initially to the U.S. and some allied military users. DOD would permit limited civil use if it was shown to be in the national interest, adequate security protection was provided, and comparable accuracy could not be obtained from another source, DOD officials said.
DOD scheduled the Navstar system, a continuous worldwide satellite-based radio navigation system, for operation in the late 1980s. (AFSC Newsreview, Oct 11/85, 6)
The information gathered by several Space Shuttle missions underscored the need for improved weather forecasting at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). NASA along with the U.S. Air Force developed a plan to improve the quality of weather data available at KSC as well as the manner in which it was presented to the forecaster, Spaceport News reported.
KSC officials recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Range Control Center on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to inaugurate the new Cape Canaveral Forecast Facility (CCFF), marking completion of a $3 million three-year effort by NASA, the Air Force, and contractor Pan Am World Services. The facility was the first important tool for improving the efficiency of the weather forecaster during launches and landings of the Space Shuttle.
The facility housed a system called MIDDS, meteorological interactive data display system, which animated and overlaid data from various forecasting tools in color graphic displays. For example, a forecaster could begin with display of a current satellite picture; over that he could place a color enhanced radar display of shower activity. Next he might add a graphic presentation of indications from wind towers around KSC; and over that he could display locations of lightning potential as well as where lightning was striking cloud-to-ground. Motion added to the entire composite picture would illustrate trends in weather activity over a period of time.
The system could overlay maps of upper wind data or barometric pressures collected from weather balloons or sounding rockets. The forecaster could also display figures from the data network of other weather stations around the country or the world.
Although the console was at the Cape Canaveral facility, the new rotating antenna was at Patrick Air Force Base to compensate for the blind spot directly above the radar. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration radar located in Dayton Beach supplemented the Cape radar. A forecaster could call up a current graphic display of any official weather radar in the U.S.
A lightning location and protection (LLP) system would show cloud-to ground strikes up to 100 miles away, from which antennas were located ten miles north of the Vehicle Assembly Building andat Melbourne Regional and Orlando International Airports. These antennas supplemented an existing network of 30 area field mills that detected lightning potential.
NASA officials hoped within five years to have at the facility a clear air doppler radar, of which there were only six in the country. It would reduce the number of wind towers needed and improve forecasting efficiency. In the meantime, Space Shuttle weather officer Scott Funk said, “We haven't tapped the full potential of the new MIDDS system. Most weather forecasters have never seen anything like this. But there are still a number of potential capabilities the system has which we will add next year.” (Spaceport News, Oct 11/ 85, 7)
The U.S. Air Force Space Technology Center's Kirtland Contracting Center awarded Aerojet Electro Systems a $17-million contract and Hughes Aircraft a $21-million contract for work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, the Air Force Systems Command Newsreview reported.
Under the contracts the companies would develop and build a space surveillance sensor called “the precursor above the horizon sensor,” which would look across space using several frequency bands in the long-wave infrared spectrum to track the trajectory of intercontinental ballistic missiles or space systems. (AFSC Newsreview, Oct 11/85, 3)
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