A MYSTERIOUS SOVIET SPACE LAUNCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504840001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 21, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WALL S1Kt;E JOURNAL
21 January 1986
A Mysterious Soviet Space Launc
By JAMES E. ORERG
Three small pieces of space junk circled
the Earth briefly last summer, then
burned up as unspectacular and probably
unseen man-made meteors. Yet among
thousands of space objects tracked by U.S.
military radars, this handful of scrap
metal-hardly enough to fill a wheelbar-
row-has a still-baffling significance. For
the first time, somebody has made an ille-
gal space shot, and that somebody is al-
most certainly the Soviet Union.
The orbiting scrap metal's significance
is that some real space vehicle went into
orbit and then vanished, leaving behind
only a few tiny telltale pieces of debris.
The most disturbing (and the least un-
likely) explanation for such an unprece-
dented Soviet space shot is a new test of
some sort of anti-satellite weapon.
Connected to a world-wide net of radars
and telescopic cameras, the North Ameri-
can Aerospace Defense Command's com-
puter complex beneath Cheyenne Mountain
in Colorado tracks and catalogs space ob-
jects. Several thousand satellites may be
in orbit at any one time, of which a few
hundred are active spacecraft and the rest
are derelicts or debris. The power screw-
driver dropped by an astronaut on a shut-
tle repair mission last summer is one ob-
ject; the 40-ton Soviet Salyut-7 space sta-
tion is another.
A Particularly Busy Day
Every new satellite launching is as-
signed a sequential identification number,
which consists of the current year followed
by the launch number within that year.
Usually, several pieces appear with each
launch, and by convention the payload is
designated "A," the booster "B," and
smaller miscellaneous debris receives
other alphabetic designators. The code is
accepted as an international standard.
More than a hundred satellite launchings
occur world-wide in any given year, and
the vast majority of them are Soviet.
June 21, 1985, was a particularly busy
day for the Soviets, NORAD observers
noted. A new robot supply ship was sent up
to the manned Salyut space station, and a
routine natural-resources survey satellite
went up later in the morning. But about
midday, a third launching was made from
the Tyuratam spaceport-and there was
something odd about it from the start.
For reference purposes, NORAD tagged
it as launch "1985-53," and cataloged three
objects, "A," "B." and "C." But upon
closer examination, analysts concluded
that all three pieces were debris. Radar
pulses measured their sizes in square me-
ters as 0.2, 0.8 and 0.9, about as big as a
collection of trash-barrel lids. There was
no spacecraft payload on the screens, nor
was there anything capable of serving as a
booster to carry the objects into orbit (if
the booster had just exploded, there would
be at least pickup-truck-sized objects). By
rights the three small pieces shouldn't
even have been there-but they were.
The orbital path followed by the 1985-53
family was not one of the two dozen "stan-
dard" trajectories utilized by routine So-
viet space missions. As the objects gradu-
ally slipped closer to Earth, their speed in-
creased and their orbital periods dropped.
One piece burned up within three days; the
others lasted seven and nine days before
falling back into the atmosphere.
The strange space shot was briefly
noted in Western newspapers and trade
magazines, but since no explanation was
evident, the subject was forgotten.
Compounding the mystery was the offi-
cial Soviet attitude on the launching:
June 21, yet by the time U.S. radars got a,
good view of it, the main spacecraft itself
had gone somewhere else (either back
down to Earth or farther out), leaving only'
a few miscellaneous shrouds and window
coverings behind. What sort of spacecraft
could it have been, and might it have been
something worthy of concern?
Because of the serious implications of
such a secret space activity, it is crucial to
establish two facts: Were the objects real,
and if so, could they possibly have come
from some other nation? Could the mys-
tery objects be merely computer software
glitches, all "in the mind" of the complex
and error-prone NORAD computers? Curi-
ously, another Soviet satellite had broken
up in space that same day. So one early
"1985-53" was the most secretive Soviet space shot in
20 years. The last such unannounced flights involved tests
of orbital thermonuclear weapons.
There wasn't any. Moscow made no an-
nouncement of any sort, and later, when
filing the required monthly registration
data with the United Nations (the report
was dated Oct. 11 but not distributed until
mid-December), Soviet diplomats point-
edly omitted any mention of the space
shot. This was unprecedented.
And here, Soviet space officials stepped
across the boundary from mere secrecy
into a violation of international law. More
than a decade ago, all major spacefaring
nations signed the Convention on Registra-
tion of Objects Launched Into Outer Space.
The U.S.S.R. was a signatory; yet its offi-
cial June 1985 space-activity report is si-
lent on the issue of "1985-53." Repeated in-
quiries (by me) to Soviet officials in New
York, Washington and Moscow elicited no
responses: It was a "space stonewall."
(On occasion there indeed have been
bookkeeping omissions caus yureau-
cratic foul-tips. the most notable 6~ ex amp e
being a U.S. spy satellite launched in April
1983. But U.S. officials quickly responded
to private inquiries and issued an amended
registration report with the U.N. Besides,
that satellite's initial launch had been pub-
licly announced.)
An old rule of thumb in dealing with So-
viet activities is "the more secretive, the
more dangerous." That is, topics talked
about candidly are probably benign, but
watch out for what they won't talk about!
The fact that "1985-53" was the most secre-
tive Soviet space shot in two decades, and
that the last such unannounced orbital
flights involved tests of orbital thermonu-
clear weapons, has disturbed some serious
observers of the Soviet space program.
The likely scenario of what happened is
this: Some sort of Soviet space vehicle
went into orbit about 8:30 a.m. GMT on
suspicion was that the "new" satellites
were errant pieces of that other space-
craft. But careful analysis of the orbital
paths of both satellites conclusively
showed that the new objects could not have
come from the older disintegrating space-
craft. Analysts were confident that 1985-53
reflected an entirely new launching.
And the ground track, based on NORAD
data, led back on a course that crossed
the main Soviet space center. No other
known space launch sites could be located
on that track. Like an accusing finger, the
plotted trace pointed right at Tyuratam, in
Soviet Central Asia. The objects were real,
and of Soviet origin.
The event was probably not the test of a
new large space booster, which has long
been anticipated. If it had exploded in or-
bit, there would have been dozens of
pieces; if it hadn't exploded, one piece
should be tens of square meters in size.
Nor is it likely to have been an im-
proved version of the super-secret unan-
nounced satellites of the mid-1960s, a then
monuclear bomb delivery system. How-
ever, such a weapon made little military
sense then, and even less today.
The mystery object might have been
some other recoverable spacecraft, possi-
bly associated with the Soviet "shuttleski"
program. The secret space plane, un-
manned (or even manned!), could have
circled Earth once and then splashed down
in the Black Sea (as two earlier tests did)
or in the North Pacific, where the Soviets
had in fact announced a forbidden rocket
test zone beginning on June 21 (oddly
enough, the zone was cleared a day after
the 1985-53 launch). The first orbit of the
1985-53 objects did in fact take them right
across the Black Sea and then near the an-
nounced Pacific impact zone north of
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504840001-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504840001-3
C;~-
Wake Island (but the exclusion warnings
there were for a different time of day than
exhibited by the mystery satellites).
Specialists with the British Interplane-
tary Society In non suggested it might
have been a routine nuclear-powered
ocean spy satellite that blew up just short
of orbit, hurling a few fragments into
space while showering the South _Pacif c
with more radioactive junk. This had hap-
pened over the mid-Pacific in 1973, over
northern Canada in 1978. and over the In-
dian Ocean in 1983. But that kind of failure
is very unlikely, the orbital path wasn't
quite right, and no traces of radioactivity
have been reported.
So, analysis leads to one remaining and
ominous theory: a weapons test.
One type of earlier satellite did have or-
bits similar to those of the 1985-53 scraps-
the "killer satellites," the co-orbital anti-
satellite weapons first tested almost 20
years ago and improved incrementally un-
til the Soviets declared a unilateral mora-
torium in late 1983. They, too, vanished
from orbit within a few hours, leaving only
debris behind. This new secret Soviet
launch could well have been a new test of
such a weapon, probably against an imagi-
nary target.
Serious Suspicions
If so, the lack of Soviet candor is under-
standable: The Soviets were violating their
own self-proclaimed moratorium on such
testing (and at precisely the time Western
anti-ASAT forces were using the Soviet
moratorium as a key argument against
similar U.S. tests). And since the payload
apparently was not ever tracked by U.S.
sensors, the test would have been a great
success-although perhaps U.S. radar
wasn't even supposed to see the debris.
These serious suspicions may be over-
drawn, and arguing by elimination can be
suspect. There is always the chance, how-
ever remote, that this unprecedented space
shot has some innocent explanation. But in
the absence of Soviet candor on this mis-
sion-in particular, with the obvious Soviet
willingness to violate an international
treaty in order to duck responsibility-any
reasonable speculation is justified.
As the two superpowers discuss control-
ling and eliminating weapons in space, it is
disturbing to see the U.S.S.R. send up an
ominous new "space first"-the world's
first unregistered satellite, an illegal or-
bital launch-a cryptic cosmic coup. The
responsibility is now on the Soviet side, in
accordance with U.N. regulations, to sat-
isfy Western anxieties about 1985-53 and
the three worrisome little satellites that
shouldn't have been there, but were.
Mr. Oberg is a spaceflight operations
engineer with the shuttle program in Hous-
ton. He is the author of "Pioneering
Space" (McGraw-Hill, 1986).
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504840001-3