Idea Shuttle payloads that never flew

[orbitingpluto]

TEAL RUBY

Unflown IR surveillance test satellite. Canceled after over a decade of development.

http://thespacereview.com/article/2599/1

Lacrosse, KH-12, and (wait for it) Teal Ruby are all in [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5593"]this addon pack[/ame] by BrianJ. Have fun!

 

[Graham2001]

Mars Geoscience Orbiter and Lunar Geoscience Orbiter (1983)

Proposal to use modified commercial satellites to study Mars and the Moon. Launch vehicle for the Mars mission was Space Shuttle/IUS-1, for the Moon Mission either a Delta3920/PAM-D(or PAM-D2) or Space Shuttle/PAM-D(or PAM-D2)

The feasibility of using the AE/DE Earth orbiting spacecraft design for the LGO and/or MGO missions was determined. Configurations were developed and subsystems analysis was carried out to optimize the suitability of the spacecraft to the missions. The primary conclusion is that the basic AE/DE spacecraft can readily be applied to the LGO mission with relatively minor, low risk modifications. The MGO mission poses a somewhat more complex problem, primarily due to the overall maneuvering hydrazine budget and power requirements of the sensors and their desired duty cycle. These considerations dictate a modification (scaling up) of the structure to support mission requirements.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830014009.pdf

 

[Capt_hensley]

What would it take to make a short list of these missions, and post them in the first post of the thread with cross links?

Has anyone found the DV extender tanks pallet, proposed to be used to reach 300 miles orbits, GEO orbits, possibly higher orbits, all with RTE reserves using either restartable SSMEs or OMS Pods? This mission would have included using the Fuel cell Lifespan extender pack as well for 21-28 days of operation.

 

[DaveS]

Found this on Flickr while I was looking around for shuttle/Centaur photos. November 1985 manifest that stretches from STS-61B to STS-81N: https://flic.kr/p/ic6Fcw

That link is only the first page, use the thumbnails to navigate to the other pages.

 

[Graham2001]

Found a couple of documents dealing with a specialized seat for use with the Shuttle-Mir missions, was not able to find anything stating that hardware resulted from the study.

Design of a recumbent seating system (Texas University)

Future space shuttle missions presented by NASA might require the shuttle to rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir for the purpose of transporting astronauts back to earth. Due to the atrophied state of these astronauts, a special seating system must be designed for their transportation. The main functions of this seating system are to support and restrain the astronauts during normal reentry flight and to dampen some of the loading that might occur in a crash situation.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940020313.pdf

Concepts and embodiment design of a reentry recumbent seating system for the NASA Space Shuttle

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940020194.pdf

 

[Graham2001]

From the early days of the shuttle program, a study into the possibility of using the backup instruments from the Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount in conjunction with Spacelab.

The feasibility and economics of mounting and operating a set of solar scientific instruments in the backup Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) hardware was evaluated. The instruments used as the study test payload and integrated into the ATM were: the Solar EUV Telescope/Spectrometer; the Solar Active Region Observing Telescope; and the Lyman Alpha White Light Coronagraph.

The backup ATM hardware consists of a central cruciform structure, called the "SPAR', a "Sun End Canister' and a "Multiple Docking Adapter End Canister'. Basically, the ATM hardware and software provides a structural interface for the instruments; a closely controlled thermal environment; and a very accurate attitude and pointing control capability. The hardware is an identical set to the hardware that flow on Skylab.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830004875.pdf

 

[Star Voyager]

1987 would have seen a lot of Navstar II payloads on STS. Here's a picture from Rockwell.

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/space-shuttle-navstar/ywGe9rezXwCnFg

 

[Graham2001]

Shuttle Experimental Radar for Geological Exploration (SERGE)

The original version of what became the Shuttle Imaging Radar (A)

The baseline configuration defined has the SERGE antenna panel array mounted on the OFT-2 pallet sufficiently high in the bay that negligible amounts of radiation from the beam are reflected from orbiter surfaces into the shuttle payload bay. The array is symmetrically mounted to the pallet along the array long dimension with the pallet at the center. It utilizes a graphite epoxy trusswork support structure. The antenna panels are of SEASAT engineering model design and construction. The antenna array has 7 panels and a 7-way naturally tapered coax corporate feed system. The performance of the system is predicted to exceed 33 db gain, have -15 db sidelobes in the E-plane and even lower in the H-plane, and have and E-plane beamwidth less than 2.2 deg, all within performance specification. The primary support structure is predicted to exceed the specified greater than 25 hertz fundamental frequency, although individual panels will have hertz fundamental frequency.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780006268.pdf

 

[Graham2001]

Project ZEUS

Courtesy of the Space Review...

In the late 1970s, the secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which developed and operated the United States’ fleet of intelligence satellites, began studying a top secret payload that would fly inside the Space Shuttle’s payload bay. The payload, named ZEUS, would have featured a pair of powerful reconnaissance cameras capable of observing large portions of the Soviet Union during a shuttle flight. One variant of ZEUS would have been a recoverable “free-flyer” satellite, deployed by the shuttle and retrieved by a later shuttle mission.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3160/1

 

[Graham2001]

A further article on the use of the Space Shuttle for Black Operations...

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.

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.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3172/1

This is part one of two.

 

[zerofay32]

A HEXAGON KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite is now on display at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio. I would upload the photos I took last June but one: I'm on the road for work and two: the photos on the museum web site are better

Here is a link the the Hexagon page: HEXAGON

It's really neat to see in person.

 

[barrygolden]

It would be cool to see some of these fly in the shuttle Atlantis

 

[Graham2001]

A further article on the planned use of the space shuttle to support US intelligence gathering operations has been posted to the Space Review.

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

 

[barrygolden]

are there any plans to get the payloads working in Atlantis 2016 ?

 

[Graham2001]

The latest Space Review article on the use of the Space Shuttle for intelligence gathering purposes has been published and covers a proposed STS-4 payload codenamed DAMON. This article covers what was planned and why it didn't fly, the as yet unpublished follow up article will cover the payload in more detail.

The first military/intelligence payload ever scheduled to fly aboard the Space Shuttle was a top-secret photographic reconnaissance system code-named DAMON and managed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). DAMON would have operated inside the shuttle’s payload bay for several days, photographing the Earth below, before the shuttle astronauts brought it back along with its precious cargo of exposed film.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3748/1

 

[barrygolden]

Thanks for those updates. Shuttle 2016 is up and running and some new unflown payloads would be great to see in the cargo bay

 

[gattispilot]

Whipped together a DAMON

only animation would be the doors

---------- Post added 07-03-19 at 05:26 AM ---------- Previous post was 07-02-19 at 07:43 AM ----------

Here it is:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d_LKM2EDqOaXCI8hGA1Q8q4MzntStgEz

it is sc3 k opens the doors. Since it never flew I haven't put it in a shuttle so no scn

 

[Graham2001]

Note:This post has been made about a year after the previous posts in this thread.

There have been a couple of articles on the Space Review website about just what the Russians knew about the shuttle while it was under development and where the idea that the Americans wanted to bomb Moscow using the shuttle may have come from.

The first of the articles linked to an early (1973) pair of Design reference missions, linked to that is a PDF covering the '3B' mission which involved a launch from Vandenberg to pick up an unspecified target, but clearly something the Russians might not like the Americans picking up followed by a quick deorbit.

http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF