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Did NASA's STS- 48 Mission Photograph Secret Star W
I am posting the following file that I received from James Oberg, a
well-known writer on the space program. He is discussing the same
videotaped footage from NASA's STS-48 mission that has been endlessly
showen as a supposed "UFO." Richard Hoagland, a major promoter of the
"Face On Mars," claims that NASA cameras accidentally caught a secret
"star wars test". Here is Oberg's rebuttal.
James Oberg, Rt 2 Box 350, Dickinson, TX 77539
Re: Did STS-48 view a "Star Wars" test?
The STS-48 mission was the 43rd shuttle launch, the 13th flight
of OV-103 Discovery, with the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite
(UARS). The crew was John Creighton, Ken Reightler, Jim Buchli,
Mark Brown, and Sam Gemar. It was launched from KSC Pad A at
2311GMT Sep 12, 1991 (twilight),landed at EAFB on Sep 18, 0738GMT
(night), duration 5d08h27m. The orbit was inclined 57 degrees to
the equator at an altitude of about 570 km, second only to the
616 km altitude of the Hubble deploy mission a year and a half
earlier. Due to radar experiments with the deployed UARS
satellite, I was present in the control room for two planning
shifts (my job was as "Guidance and Procedures Officer" for
actions related to orbital rendezvous, such as the planned
checkout of the radar which had shown performance anomalies on
several earlier missions).
I have reviewed the videotape by Richard Hoagland alleging that
the notorious STS-48 videotape shows a "Star Wars" weapons test
against a target drone with astounding propulsion. In my
judgment, the facts, analysis, and conclusions presented by Mr.
Hoagland are entirely wrong.
Is the object really very far away? Hoagland's argument depends
on proving that the object is at or beyond the physical horizon,
"1713 miles away". Proving this depends on optical analysis of
the image and of its motion. All of Hoagland's analysis is
invalid.
First, Hoagland alleges that the videotape shows the object
suddenly appearing at the edge of the Earth, as if it had popped
up from behind the horizon. But a more cautious viewing of the
tape shows this is not accurate.
The object does NOT rise from "behind the horizon". It appears
(arguably, it becomes sunlit) at a point below the physical
horizon, just slightly below, to be sure, but measurably below
the edge of the Earth (the "limb").
It has been suggested (Dipietro) that the object's sudden
appearance is due to sunrise. This is plausible. I suggest a
variation on this, that the object became visible when it moved
up out of the shuttle's shadow just after sunrise. Since the
video was taken near sunrise, the shuttle's shadow was pointing
back nearly parallel to Earth's horizon, and the ground was still
dark (bright ground reflection later lights up debris even if
they are in the shuttle's sun shadow). This would require that it
be close to the shuttle. The proximity to the horizon line would
be coincidental.
Note that the bright light in upper left is some sort of camera
anomaly and is not an electronic horizon marker as alleged by
Hoagland. There is no such thing as an electronic horizon marker.
Is the object behind the atmosphere? Hoagland argues that
analysis of the imagery shows the object is physically behind the
atmosphere. But I disagree. It is NOT seen through the
atmosphere:
First, consider the brightening effect. Computer analysis is
shown which alleges that the brightening of the object while
below the airglow layer is analogous to the brightening of stars
setting behind the airglow layer. This allegedly implies that the
object, like the stars, is behind the airglow layer.
This argumentation is false because it posits the wrong causation
mechanism for brightening ("passage of the light through
atmosphere"). This should be obvious since at the airglow
altitude (40-60 miles) the atmosphere is already extremely thin
and the lapse rate (the drop in pressure per rise in altitude) is
already much reduced over the value at lower altitudes (that is,
crossing the "airglow boundary" does NOT significantly change the
atmospheric density the light ray is passing through). If density
WERE the true cause of brightening, the effect would markedly
peak at a lower altitude (as soon as the beam rose above total
obscuration), then drop rapidly as atmospheric density dropped,
and show NO NOTICEABLE CHANGE in dimunition rate as it crossed
the airglow layer because the density of traversed air wouldn't
change much either at that region.
The actual connection for the object's brightening is the
absolute brightness of the airglow layer in the background. The
object is brighter when it is against a bright background, just
as stars are brighter. This is not an effect of a light ray
transiting the airglow region and somehow being strengthened.
Instead, I believe it is an effect on the camera optics of the
summing, pixel by pixel, of all brightness within the field of
view. A bright object with a dark background will not throw as
many photons on the individual pixels of the camera as would a
bright object with a half-bright background. The camera's vidicon
system will respond to light in the background by brightening the
small point-source objects observed in that region, either lying
behind or crossing in front of that background. Repeat: crossing
in front of that airglow.
This is confirmed by other checks. Observers can note that other
drifting point-source objects, clearly starting well below the
horizon line, also brighten as they traverse the airglow region.
NOTE: Hoagland's argument that the dimming beyond the airglow
disproves NASA's contention that the object is nearby and sunlit,
since as it gradually rose "higher into the sunlight" it should
brighten, not dim, is false. Once in full sunlight, no further
brightening occurs. Sunrise only lasts as long as it takes for
the sun (0.5 degrees wide) to rise above the horizon, at the
orbital angular rate of 4 degrees per minute (that is, 360
degrees in a 90-minute orbit), which comes to just 7-8 seconds,
which anybody should have been able to figure out. Of course this
is different from ground rates, which depends for the sun's
angular motion on earth's rotation rate (4 minutes per degree, 16
times slower than spaceship orbital rate). This argument reveals
Hoagland's unfamiliarity with basic orbital flight conditions and
implications.
Notice that no mention is made by Hoagland of the clear absence
of expected refractive effects of being behind the atmosphere. As
is known by anybody who's watched sunset/moonset at a flat
horizon, the atmosphere creates significant distortion in the
bottom .2-.4 degrees of the image. The lowest layers demonstrate
a vertical compression of 2:1 or greater. This is also shown on
pictures of "moonset" from orbit. If the STS-48 object were
really travelling nearly parallel to the horizon but somewhere
behind the atmosphere, this would be visible by analyzing its
flight path. As it rose its line of travel would markedly change
as atmospheric refractive effects disappeared. This does not
happen, which strongly suggests that the object is NOT behind the
atmosphere.
Since the arguments for great range to the object all fail, the
conclusions based on angular motion converted to physical motion
also fail.
What is the "flare" in the camera that precedes the change in
motion of all the objects? I believe the flare in the lower left
camera FOV is an RCS jet firing, not per Hoagland an
electromagnetic pulse effect. There are several reasons: it does
not look like any known electromagnetic video interference; it
looks just like previously seen RCS flares; and the Hoagland
counterargument about an alleged need for pointing changing is
not valid.
First, while it is true that EMI can affect electrical equipment,
such pulses would not lie in any localized region of a television
screen but would blitz the whole image. Anybody whose TV has ever
been blitzed by lightning knows that the effect does not confine
itself to the corner nearest the lightning. Also, far more
sensitive electronic equipment aboard the shuttle, including
computers which were counting the pulses of individual cosmic
rays striking their circuits, were not affected by the event
(otherwise, the entire television transmission would have been
knocked out). So Hoagland's explanation is magical and
unrealistic.
Second, the optical appearance of RCS jet firings is well known
and familiar to experienced observers, and they look just like
the flash in question. These have been observed and videotaped on
every shuttle mission, from the crew cabin, from payload bay and
RMS cameras, and from cameras on nearby free-flying satellites,
and from ground optical tracking cameras as well.
Third, Hoagland's argument that the line of travel of stars down
to the horizon should have been kinked by the jet firing is plain
ignorant. During attitude hold coast periods, the shuttle
autopilot maintains a "deadband" of several degrees, slowly
drifting back and forth and, when the attitude exceeds the
deadband limit, a jet is pulsed to nudge (NOT "shove") the
spaceship back toward the center of the deadband. The angular
rates induced by these 80-msec pulses are as follows:
ROLL .07 deg/sec
PITCH .10 deg/sec
YAW .05 deg/sec
Note that the star motion would have changed direction ONLY IF
the orbiter's pointing attitude was shifted to the right or left.
If shifted up or down, only a slight change in star motion rate
would occur (this appears to be the way the jet plume is actually
directed) but so would horizon motion, so it would have to
measured as absolute screen position. If shifted in or out, no
change at all would be observable. This is all based on pure
geometric considerations overlooked by Hoagland.
After ten seconds, even in the worst case (pitch motion inducing
pure crossways angular motion), the star track would only have
diverged a single degree from the former straight line. This is
visually undetectable on the images shown by Hoagland.
So the fact that he sees no change in the star motion tracks does
not disprove that the pulse was an RCS jet.
Video Encryption: Hoagland alleges that since STS-48, all
external STS video has been encrypted and will be viewed only
after NASA review and approval. I have checked with a NASA Public
Affairs official, and have personally verified, that things (as
usual) are not quite what Richard Hoagland alleges. On STS-42,
the second flight after STS-48 (the STS-44 DoD mission went
between them), the International Microgravity Laboratory
(Spacelab) science group requested that medical video imagery
from the cardiological studies (sonogram images) be treated as
privileged medical information, as all previous audio
conversations with doctors had been. NASA discovered that having
to continuously reconfigure the White Sands TDRSS site and the
TDRSS satellites back and forth for encrypted video transmission
was a laborous process. Rather than spend all that time, it was
decided to go into encrypted mode continuously and decrypt the
raw video at NASA Goddard for immediate release over the "NASA
Select" circuit. Normally, when there was shuttle video, the
White Sands to Goddard raw video link had been unencrypted, and
the Goddard relay to "NASA Select" required no further
processing; but when medically-privileged video was to be
transmitted (a new innovation on STS-42, planned for years),
complex encryption processes had to be initiated on the shuttle,
on the TDRS satellites, at White Sands, and at Goddard. The
procedure for constant encryption was implemented to avoid the
cost of many switchovers between modes. But the NASA Select video
from Goddard was to continue to be decrypted except for the
medical transmissions, which were to be openly announced on the
audio feed, just not piped into a million homes and schools
nationwide. Since then, the NASA Select video (originating at
NASA Goddard, and containing other sources of video, too) has
continued to be transmitted as before, with the only change that
the White Sands to Goddard link (which viewers could previously
observe when it was active) is now encrypted. There is no hint
from air-to-ground conversations that anything other than the new
(and long scheduled) medical video imagery is being interrupted.
And although it is encrypted, the White Sands raw feed can be
observed to tell if there is a video signal or not on the feed,
so I am told.
Conclusion: The standing explanation, that the objects are near
the shuttle, are sunlit, and are affected by the plume field of
an RCS jet firing, remains valid.
P.S. Hoagland made a number of other factually erroneous comments
about live planetary image transmissions. He says that all
previously NASA planetary probes transmitted live imagery.
Actually, only fly-by probes did that, particularly the fly-by
probes which had slow transmission rates which took many minutes
to build up each image. Probes orbiting other planets (Venus and
Mars, for example), do not (and I believe, never HAVE)
transmitted live imagery, since they are frequently occulted by
the planet's mass. Each orbit's imagery is stored and dumped over
a short portion of each orbit, and the imagery data is initially
decoded over the next hours and days. Live coverage of the actual
image transmission would usually be blank, but for a few minutes
every few hours would show images flipping across the screen at a
very fast rate, if there was enough computer power to decode them
in this "real time" speed. There is no practical reason why
computers have to be built so powerful to keep up with the high-
speed dump rate for a few minutes, then rest idle for the next
several hours. Outside of avoiding whines about censorship,
there's no reason to do so.
--
Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - [email protected]
Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that
they are not even superficial."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: 126)
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