Space Shuttle secret mission STS27, just seconds from disaster. Get the story from astronaut Hoot Gibson.
STS27 was the 27th NASA Space Shuttle mission and the third flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Launching on December 2, 1988, on a fourday mission, it was the second shuttle flight after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of January 1986. STS27 carried a classified payload for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), ultimately determined to be a Lacrosse surveillance satellite. The vessel's heat shielding was substantially damaged during liftoff, and crew members thought that they would die during reentry.

HOOT GIBSON SERIES SEASON 1:
EPISODE 01:    • The Real TOPGUN | Robert "Hoot" Gibso...  
EPISODE 01 EXTENDED:    • The Man Who Can Fly Anything. From Pi...  
EPISODE 02:    • Seconds From Disaster | STS27 PART 2...  
EPISODE 03:    • Seconds From Disaster | STS27 PART 2...  
EPISODE 04:    • Hoot Gibson's Hangar #04 | A Rare Ins...  
EPISODE 05:    • The Man Who Can Fly Anything.  EPISOD...  
EPISODE 06:    • The Man Who Can Fly Anything | Hoot G...  
EPISODE 07:    • The Man Who Can Fly Anything EPISODE ...  
EPISODE 08:    • TRAINING AND COMBAT. Hoot Gibson, Top...  
EPISODE 09:    • Shooting MiGs In Vietnam, and Top Gun...  
EPISODE 10:    • From The F14 Tomcat To The Space Shu...  
EPISODE 11:    • The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster...  
EPISODE 12:    • Investigating Accidents | Hoot Gibson...  
EPISODE 13:    • Fatal Accident | Hoot Gibson Episode ...  
EPISODE 14:    • Space Shuttle At Mach 25 | Hoot Gibso...  
FULL PLAYLIST:    • The Man Who Can Fly Anything. HOOT GI...  

The Space Shuttle Atlantis (OV104), at the time the youngest in NASA's shuttle fleet, made its third flight on a classified mission for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). It deployed a single satellite, USA34. NASA archival information has identified USA34 as Lacrosse 1, a sidelooking radar, allweather surveillance satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Atlantis' Thermal Protection System tiles sustained extensive damage during the flight. Ablative insulating material from the righthand solid rocket booster nose cap had hit the orbiter about 85 seconds into the flight, as seen in footage of the ascent. The STS27 crew also commented that white material was observed on the windshield at various times during the ascent. The crew made an inspection of the shuttle's impacted starboard side using the shuttle's Canadarm, but the limited resolution and range of the cameras made it impossible to determine the full extent of the tile damage.

The problem was compounded by the fact that the crew was prohibited from using their standard method of sending images to ground control due to the classified nature of the mission. The crew was forced to use a slow, encrypted transmission method, likely causing the images NASA engineers received to be of poor quality, causing them to think the damage was actually "just lights and shadows". They told the crew the damage did not look any more severe than on past missions.

One report describes the crew as "infuriated" that Mission Control Center seemed unconcerned. When Gibson saw the damage he thought to himself, "We are going to die"; he and others did not believe that the shuttle would survive reentry. Gibson advised the crew to relax because "No use dying all tensedup", he said, but if instruments indicated that the shuttle was disintegrating, Gibson planned to "tell mission control what I thought of their analysis" in the remaining seconds before his death.

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