No one in government is taking credit for a secret payload launched out of Cape Canaveral yesterday. But helping to provide clues to the mystery payload are amateur sky watchers, who believe the mission is designed to address a coverage gap created by delays in other big-ticket military satellite programs, reports Spaceflight Now.
Lockheed Martin has confirmed that its spacecraft, called PAN, was launched atop an Atlas V, but the company isn't providing much in the way of details. Neither is the U.S. Air Force. "This launch helps to ensure that vital communications will continue to bolster our nation's capabilities and showcases why the 45th Space Wing is the world's premiere gateway to space," Brig. Gen. Edward L. Bolton, Jr., 45th Space Wing commander said in an official press release.
"The leading theory suggested PAN was a quick-build satellite that would serve as a communications gap-filler between the aging constellation of Ultra-High Frequency Follow-On (UFO) spacecraft and the sophisticated next-generation Mobile User Objective System that's still being developed," reports Spaceflight Now, which interviewed sky watchers about the launch.
SpaceFlight Now, which has some of the best details on the mystery launch, reports that the payload is estimated at a relatively light 7,700 pounds.
"The most likely remaining possibility is that a civilian intelligence agency, perhaps the CIA, decided much earlier, about 2005-06, that it could not risk a coverage gap, and obtained approval to rapidly procure and launch a satellite compatible with the UFO satellites," Ted Molczan, one of the trackers, told Spaceflight Now.
Sky watchers have played animportant role in tracking classified satellites, for which few details are otherwise available.
[Photo: NASA]
