work had to be done, there was always someone in Olympus Station’s hub, watching through the telescope for the reappearance of the Challenger Ghost.
It always appeared at exactly the same time, at 11:44 A.M. off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral. Whoever was watching through the telescope would see against the dark Atlantic waters a brief bright white-hot flash of light, like an explosion was occurring in the high atmosphere downrange from the Kennedy Space Center. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the flash would fade, leaving the watcher feeling confused, and slightly chilled.
Undoubtedly, what one had seen was the explosion of an airborne object in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral. The logical explanation, given the apparent altitude and bearings of the flash, was that a spacecraft just launched from the Cape had exploded over the Atlantic. However, in a sacred tradition dating from 1986, no manned or unmanned rockets were ever launched from the Kennedy Space Center on January 28—the anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
When the phenomenon had first been noticed, no one on Olympus Station recognized the significance of the date or time. An urgent radio message to the Kennedy Space Center was made by Olympus Command, inquiring if one of the cargo rockets which regularly lifted of from the Cape had exploded. After a longer than usual delay, the following message had been received:
CANAVERAL 1156 TO OLYMPUS RE LAST INQUIRY: WE NEVER REPEAT NEVER LAUNCH ANY SPACECRAFT ON THIS DAY. NO EXPLOSIONS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED DOWNRANGE BY GROUND OBSERVERS OR BY RADAR. CAPE WISHES TO INFORM OLYMPUS SOURCE THAT HE/SHE HAS A SICK SENSE OF HUMOR IF THIS IS BULLSHIT AS WE SUSPECT. CANAVERAL OUT.
Later, once Olympus Station assured the NASA administrators at the Cape that a nasty joke was not at the heart of the matter, both Skycorp and NASA began quiet investigations of their own. Yet nothing could be definitively proved or disproved until a year later, when January 28 rolled around again. On that day, a team of photographers, space historians, and scientists—including a couple of parapsychologists—were gathered at the Cape, monitoring by both optical telescope and by cameras sent aloft on Air Force planes the area of airspace nine miles down-range from the Cape where the Challenger had been destroyed by a malfunctioning solid-rocket booster. At the same time, a small group of Olympus crewmen gathered in the Meteorology compartment of the as-yet uncompleted space station to watch the event. A third group of observers were aboard the airplanes circling the area of the Atlantic Ocean where the sighting had been made. All three groups were recording the event with video cameras—and one of the parapsychologists was an esper who concentrated her thoughts on the approximate area of the explosion.
Nothing was seen from the ground or from the sky, or was registered by any of the cameras, but the flash was seen from space, at exactly the same historical moment when the Challenger was consumed in a ball of fire. A weather satellite’s pictures confirmed the eyewitness reports of the Olympus crewmen, and subsequent computer enhancements of those pictures showed a definite explosion, down to faint streaks showing what appeared to be two solid-rocket boosters beginning to arch away from the center of the explosion. But no one on the ground or in the air saw anything unusual; that information was confirmed by the camera footage. The parapsychologist who was attempting to gather an ESP impression at the crucial moment had to be told when the event had occurred; she registered nothing in her mind.
But from space, it had been seen. Still later, a NASA investigator making a check through satellite footage, which happened to have been taken of that area since 1987, noticed that similar white spots were evident in all pictures taken over Florida’s Atlantic coast on those days when the sky was not overcast and the satellites’ cameras were
It always appeared at exactly the same time, at 11:44 A.M. off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral. Whoever was watching through the telescope would see against the dark Atlantic waters a brief bright white-hot flash of light, like an explosion was occurring in the high atmosphere downrange from the Kennedy Space Center. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the flash would fade, leaving the watcher feeling confused, and slightly chilled.
Undoubtedly, what one had seen was the explosion of an airborne object in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral. The logical explanation, given the apparent altitude and bearings of the flash, was that a spacecraft just launched from the Cape had exploded over the Atlantic. However, in a sacred tradition dating from 1986, no manned or unmanned rockets were ever launched from the Kennedy Space Center on January 28—the anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
When the phenomenon had first been noticed, no one on Olympus Station recognized the significance of the date or time. An urgent radio message to the Kennedy Space Center was made by Olympus Command, inquiring if one of the cargo rockets which regularly lifted of from the Cape had exploded. After a longer than usual delay, the following message had been received:
CANAVERAL 1156 TO OLYMPUS RE LAST INQUIRY: WE NEVER REPEAT NEVER LAUNCH ANY SPACECRAFT ON THIS DAY. NO EXPLOSIONS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED DOWNRANGE BY GROUND OBSERVERS OR BY RADAR. CAPE WISHES TO INFORM OLYMPUS SOURCE THAT HE/SHE HAS A SICK SENSE OF HUMOR IF THIS IS BULLSHIT AS WE SUSPECT. CANAVERAL OUT.
Later, once Olympus Station assured the NASA administrators at the Cape that a nasty joke was not at the heart of the matter, both Skycorp and NASA began quiet investigations of their own. Yet nothing could be definitively proved or disproved until a year later, when January 28 rolled around again. On that day, a team of photographers, space historians, and scientists—including a couple of parapsychologists—were gathered at the Cape, monitoring by both optical telescope and by cameras sent aloft on Air Force planes the area of airspace nine miles down-range from the Cape where the Challenger had been destroyed by a malfunctioning solid-rocket booster. At the same time, a small group of Olympus crewmen gathered in the Meteorology compartment of the as-yet uncompleted space station to watch the event. A third group of observers were aboard the airplanes circling the area of the Atlantic Ocean where the sighting had been made. All three groups were recording the event with video cameras—and one of the parapsychologists was an esper who concentrated her thoughts on the approximate area of the explosion.
Nothing was seen from the ground or from the sky, or was registered by any of the cameras, but the flash was seen from space, at exactly the same historical moment when the Challenger was consumed in a ball of fire. A weather satellite’s pictures confirmed the eyewitness reports of the Olympus crewmen, and subsequent computer enhancements of those pictures showed a definite explosion, down to faint streaks showing what appeared to be two solid-rocket boosters beginning to arch away from the center of the explosion. But no one on the ground or in the air saw anything unusual; that information was confirmed by the camera footage. The parapsychologist who was attempting to gather an ESP impression at the crucial moment had to be told when the event had occurred; she registered nothing in her mind.
But from space, it had been seen. Still later, a NASA investigator making a check through satellite footage, which happened to have been taken of that area since 1987, noticed that similar white spots were evident in all pictures taken over Florida’s Atlantic coast on those days when the sky was not overcast and the satellites’ cameras were
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