DART mishap report

Remember how I was very suspicious about a covert military connection to
DART?
According to NASA Watch, the reason the mishap report is taking so long
to come out is that the DoD is putting it through a classification review:

"NASA selected the mishap investigation board to determine why the
Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft did
not complete its mission on April 15."

Editor's note: It has been more than 8 months. Why hasn't there been any
word as to when the DART Mishap Investigation Board will issue its
findings? Word has it that the results of the investigation have
actually been known for some time.

Editor's update: Word has it that as of last week, the DART mishap
report (which does apparently exist) was undergoing a classification
review by DoD - and DoD has not provided a date for the report's
release. As such, the current delay seems to be of DoD's making - not
NASA's.

http://www.nasawatch.com/

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Remember how I was very suspicious about a covert military connection to
DART?
According to NASA Watch, the reason the mishap report is taking so long
to come out is that the DoD is putting it through a classification review:

"NASA selected the mishap investigation board to determine why the
Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft did
not complete its mission on April 15."

They did the same thing for CONTOUR.

It makes no sense for the military to have a covert connection to DART
when they have a more-or-less overt program that does the same thing in
XSS-11 (and XSS-10 before it).

-jake

Jake McGuire wrote:

They did the same thing for CONTOUR.

It makes no sense for the military to have a covert connection to DART
when they have a more-or-less overt program that does the same thing in
XSS-11 (and XSS-10 before it).

In the case of CONTOUR, it seems likely that the classification was due
to important data on the failed motor burn coming from an IR sensor on
a Secret Satellite.

I haven't paid much attention to DART, but perhaps something similar is
going on with it.

wrote:
They did the same thing for CONTOUR.

It makes no sense for the military to have a covert connection to DART
when they have a more-or-less overt program that does the same thing in
XSS-11 (and XSS-10 before it).

In the case of CONTOUR, it seems likely that the classification was due
to important data on the failed motor burn coming from an IR sensor on
a Secret Satellite.

Ah, I suspected (or thought I read somewhere) that the problem was that
they got into lots of detailed modeling of IR characteristics of solid
exhaust motor plumes (to determine soakback into the spacecraft), and
didn't want said plumes to be that well understood around the world due
to missile defense / ASAT implications.

I haven't paid much attention to DART, but perhaps something similar is
going on with it.

Could be. I was thinking general non-ASAT-proliferation issues, but
something could have been watching that they don't want revealed.

-jake