Even for an organisation as all-powerful as the Department of Defense, the launch and deployment of secret satellites into orbit is a complicated and difficult task — besides which, spooked observers nearby might conclude they were witnessing a UFO and flood with calls the local emergency lines (and newspapers). In a semi-secret state of affairs, the DoD prefers instead to contract out their secret deployments to NASA.

On this day, August 8, in 1989, one such secret deployment took place. The Space Shuttle Columbia took off from Edwards Air Force Base, rather than the usual Cape Canaveral, with a classified payload towards a classified orbit. The mission profile, as you might already suspect, was also classified.

Of course “classified” does not necessarily mean completely unknown. The orbital height, calculated by comparing the miles travelled to the number of orbits completely (both open information) is estimated to between 137 and 205 miles. And the payload was widely believed to be the first SDS-2 military communications satellite.