Feb 17 1979
From The Space Library
The Washington Post reported that NASA's failure to tell a contractor about classified information on the USSR's early-warning radar network had cost the federal government $75 million, the cost of rebuilding the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) to maintain communications with crews on the Shuttle in its first 10 years; of operations. NASA had had to renegotiate a $786 million contract awarded 3 years ago to Western Union, which designed the TDRSS without knowing about the problem of interference from USSR installations located between the Baltic and the Black Seas and using frequencies high enough to overpower transmissions between the TDRSS and the Shuttle orbiter. An unidentified source told the newspaper that U.S. intelligence had given such a "superclassified" designation to data on Soviet radar frequencies and power outputs that NASA could not give the information to Western Union and its subcontractor TRW Systems, Inc. Renegotiation and rework had delayed the satellite: system by at least a year, NASA told Congress, but would not impair Shuttle operations already delayed by engine development problems. (W Post, Feb 17179, A-9)
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