How the Soviet space shuttle fizzled

'Codename Farewell' takes shape
With the documents in hand, and Vetrov’s role still unknown to his bosses at KGB headquarters, the CIA devised a plan to take revenge. In partnership with the FBI, the United States would “make available” to Soviet collectors “modified” products.

Gus Weiss, a Reagan aide at the National Security Council, wrote about how the plan was conceived in the CIA’s “Studies in Intelligence”:

“I met with William Casey, Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence, on a frosty afternoon in January 1982. ... I proposed using the Farewell material to feed or play back the products sought by [the Soviets], only these would come from our own sources and would have been ‘improved,’ that is designed so that on arrival in the Soviet Union they would appear genuine but would later fail. U.S. intelligence would match Soviet requirements supplied through Vetrov with our version of those items, ones that would not — to say the least — meet the expectations of that vast Soviet apparatus.”

Casey was enthusiastic, and critical materials were developed, including several shuttle-related materials based on rejected NASA designs. In response to an NBC News Freedom of Information Act request, NASA denied it had any documents related to any Soviet effort to steal the U.S. shuttle design, but buried in an August 1989 technical analysis of the similarities between the two shuttles were hints of the program’s success, particularly in the development of heat-resistant tiles that protected the shuttle as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. With regard to the use of ablative (or adhesive) material in gaps between tiles on some surfaces, a Johnson Spaceflight Center engineer noted, “Soviets have ablative material in their elevon gaps, just like we did. We fooled them and now use tiles in the gaps.” On another page of the analysis, the anonymous engineer noted another disparity was “probably due to their stolen technology freeze in the early ’80s.”

A NASA source says in fact the tiles were a big problem when the Soviets launched and returned the Buran in November, agreeing they were “cooked.” Is there firm public evidence the Soviets obtained defective tiles? No, but as two officials told NBC News, the United States was handing out early versions of the tiles in the late ‘70s like they were candy.

Some time in the winter of 1983, Vetrov’s espionage was uncovered. He had bragged in a letter to his family that he had been part of something big. The KGB brought him back to Moscow, interrogated him, got him to confess, and then executed him, apparently by firing squad.

His legacy was a rich one, however. By exposing the Soviet operation, he increased the awareness of technology transfer. Once the French learned of his death, hundreds of Soviet spies serving as diplomats were sent packing, and the “stolen technology freeze” the shuttle engineer wrote about was on.

As the Defense Intelligence Agency later concluded in a then-classified report that drew on Vetrov’s spying, “By using U.S. propulsion, computer, materials, and airframe technology and designs, the Soviets were able to produce an orbiter years earlier, and at far less cost, than if they had depended solely on their own technology and engineering. Resources including money and scientific expertise could thus be diverted to other areas.”

Other spies, other guises
When Columbia was launched in April 1981, the United States was well aware of the Soviet effort to copy it, but not that the Soviets had begun building the first of its orbiters — called “Buran”, Russian for “Snowstorm” — the year before. It would be five years before the United States got a good look at the similarities and another seven before the rest of the world would see it. But the United States knew the Soviets were still gathering data, as evidenced by the level of interest on the part of Soviet spy ships and aircraft.

One big fear: What was NASA’s legal position should a Soviet ship try to tow away the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters after they were jettisoned during launch. Even a cursory look, the United States knew, would be a big help.

The Soviets had nosed around the first launches, following the recovery vessels as they towed the SRB’s back to Cape Canaveral. Finally, in September 1981, the Kennedy Space Center’s safety director asked the space agency’s general counsel how far the United States could go under international law to protect the solid rocket boosters from seizure.

The bottom line was shocking. The chief counsel said that if the recovery ships or the Coast Guard ships that accompanied them were not near the solid rocket booster and a “foreign vessel” attempted to grab the rocket, “such action would be lawful and its return would need to be sought through diplomatic channels.” If the U.S. ships were on hand and the Soviets attached a line to the solid rocket booster for retrieval, the U.S. option would have to be limited to “peaceful removal of the attachment.” Only if the foreign ship forcibly attempted to seize the rockets could the operation be “lawfully resisted by all necessary and appropriate force.”

The main reason the Soviet ships were on hand — Soviet Bear spy planes were loitering off the coast and Soviet satellite dishes at Lourdes, Cuba, were pointing skyward — was to get as much telemetry data about the shuttle recorded and sent back to Moscow. One reason was to get a good read on the shuttle design, but the Soviets truly feared the military implications of what they had labeled a “space bomber” five years earlier.

And the espionage wasn’t limited to the Cape. The Soviets also showed interest in the Mojave Desert, where the first shuttle missions landed. Fourteen hours after the launch of Columbia, Kosmos 1262, then in space only a week, was maneuvered into a new orbit that brought it closer to the Earth. What military analysts like Nick Johnson of Teledyne Brown Engineering quickly realized was that Kosmos 1262 flew directly over the shuttle’s Edwards AFB landing site about 10 minutes before Columbia touched down, showing a keen interest in the landing characteristics of the shuttle. Two flights later, another Soviet spy satellite, Kosmos 1343, passed directly over the White Sands landing strip 15 minutes before the shuttle landed, giving it a good view of landing preparations.

“One possible explanation,” wrote Johnson at the time, “was the desire to get a satellite’s view of the site for reference in assessing potential future landing fields and the deployment of ground support equipment.”

In fact, shuttle astronauts were amazed years later when they saw the first U.S. spy satellite photos of the Soviet shuttle landing strip at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The strips were in many ways identical down to the markings shuttle pilots used to trigger certain landing operations.

At the same time, the United States stepped up its own intelligence gathering on the possible military uses of a Soviet space shuttle — mirror-imaging at its best. The most bizarre misread may have been the DIA’s faulty analysis of four Soviet launches of sub-scale “lifting bodies” designed to test the shuttle’s aerodynamic qualities. Between 1982 and 1984, the Soviets sent what it called BOR-4 lifting bodies into space. The first two, Kosmos 1374 and Kosmos 1445, remained in space for a few orbits and then were recovered in the Indian Ocean. On one recovery, the Australian Air Force was able to get photographs of the vehicle being dragged on board the Soviet trawler that tracked its descent. It looked like a small space plane and unlike the space shuttle.

The real reason behind the flight was to test heat-resistant re-entry materials and to gather aerodynamic data for the Soviet space shuttle. At only 4,000 pounds and 12 feet long, it was hardly the harbinger of a new space fighter, but that is exactly what the DIA reported it to be. The defense agency buttressed its analysis by quoting from Soviet documents on the military uses of space, which in turn had been written in response to fears about the military uses of the U.S. shuttle.

The DIA noted the Soviet Military Encyclopedia had described various uses and stated, “While such a spacecraft, as noted in the encyclopedia entry of Aerospace Vehicles, would apparently be used to supply orbiting space stations, it would also have a broad range of possible military functions.” The DIA report then quoted the encyclopedia, “A special feature of its flight is its ability to enter and achieve near earth orbit, descend from orbit for maneuvers in the dense layers of the atmosphere (using aerodynamic forces), and return to a new orbit in outer space.”

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

The coldest places in the solar system Decrepit stars locate the fountain of youth Trio brings holiday cheer to space station Rover makes discovery while spinning wheels Cosmic Log: The year in space   2009's best images from space How much real science is in ‘Avatar’? Mystery swirls around ‘dark stars’ Cassini image confirms liquid on Saturn moon Long-defunct Mars rover wheel spins Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: