{"id":518,"date":"2010-11-15T11:16:17","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T11:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=518"},"modified":"2010-11-15T11:16:17","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T11:16:17","slug":"delivering-secret-payload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/delivering-secret-payload\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivering a Secret Payload"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago today — November 15, 1990 — Space Shuttle Atlantis<\/em> launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a classified Department of Defense mission.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(STS-38 crewmembers in the crew compartment trainer. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nSTS-38<\/a> astronauts Richard O. Covey, Frank L. Culbertson, Jr.,* Charles “Sam” Gemar, Robert C. Springer and Carl J. Meade deployed their classified payload — which was probably classified higher than SECRET — and then returned to Earth on November 20th.<\/p>\n

This Wikipedia article<\/a> includes speculation about what that payload might have been. Don’t ask me: I don’t know, and if I did I still wouldn’t say.<\/p>\n

___
\n*I met CAPT (Ret.) Culbertson last year, at the NASA Industry\/Education Summit. In the “small world” department, our high schools used to be in the same conference, back when my high school still existed.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago today — November 15, 1990 — Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a classified Department of Defense mission. (STS-38 crewmembers in the crew compartment trainer. NASA image.) STS-38 astronauts Richard O. Covey, Frank L. Culbertson, Jr.,* Charles “Sam” Gemar, Robert C. Springer and \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,11,12],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}