Turk-Sat 1

[RamjetFDO 10604]

So - waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the halcyon days of the Space Shuttle program, during the STS-44 mission in 1991, we were flying over Thanksgiving.  Mission-wise, the crew had deployed a "secret" DoD satellite earlier in the mission and were well into their sleep period on this particular flight day.  This is where things got ... "interesting".  The Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO) - DISCLAIMER: not me, but a good friend of mine - notified the Flight Director that he had just received a last-second and unavoidable "conjunction" with a Turkish satellite (Turk-Sat 1) during the upcoming ZOE (Zone of Exclusion, a 5-15 minute gap where there was no way to communicate with the crew).  This was HIGHLY unusual, not only because of the late notice and absolute certainty of a collision - but also because there was no time at all to calculate an avoidance maneuver, wake up the crew, and execute the burn before the ZOE.

As you'd expect, this really spun up that Flight Director into thinking he was going to lose the crew while they slept to the first orbital debris collision with a manned spacecraft.  

...

... but it wasn't what he thought.

In 1991, Turkey had no satellites in orbit.  This was a practical joke by a few of the Flight Controllers (including the FDO) to pass the time since they were stuck on console, in the middle of the night, on Thanksgiving.

They even put a turkey icon onto the worldmap display.

...

The Flight Director hadn't caught onto this by the time he started calling upper-level management.

That's when the "oh shit" realization hit the pranksters that their joke had gotten out of hand, and in the most spectacularly bad way.

Fortunately - it *was* a joke and not real, but there was a good bit of post-flight explanations, some disciplinary actions, and a clear understanding passed to all MCC operators that this wasn't to happen again.

 

We can laugh about it *now*, but it was a pretty intense few moments for that Flight Director on console, then for those operators in the few days/weeks after the mission completed.

--------------------------------

 

It's actually now been written about and has been made public here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/that-time-on-thanksgiving-when-debris-threatened-the-space-shuttle/

 

When my FDO buddy retired, "Uncle Milty" (the Flight Director) came to his retirement party and recounted the incident ... making sure to get as many laughs at the retiring FDO's expense as possible.  

[WhatTheBuck 28845]

Couldn't they have settled for a nice game of chess?

[El Diablo 4232]

I've been known to emit some space debris on Thanksgiving, so, close to home and all that.