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The Space Review: Secret Apollo

This was not the first time that NASA had annoyed the intelligence community with its astronaut photography, and it certainly would not be the last. In 1974, astronauts aboard the Skylab 4 mission had photographed the top secret airfield at Groom Lake in Nevada. Groom Lake, often euphemistically referred to as “Area 51”, is the site of classified aircraft research and is where both the U-2 and SR-71 spyplanes were first flown. Despite apparently explicit orders not to do so, the astronauts had taken a photograph of the airfield. This prompted a debate within the government after the film was returned to Earth. NASA wanted the photograph released in keeping with its mission of being open and public about its activities. Members of the intelligence community wanted the photograph classified because it depicted a secret facility. Other members of the government questioned the precedent of classifying previously unclassified material. (See “Astronauts and Area 51: the Skylab Incident”, The Space Review, January 9, 2006).

In my previous article on this subject I stated that the photograph in question had not been publicly released. This was untrue, and the result of sloppy research on my part (I assumed that because numerous Area 51 buffs had not previously located the photograph, it was not in publicly accessible archives—I broke one of my own research rules and never bothered to search myself. Then again, nobody’s perfect, and this isn’t the first time that the Internet has perpetuated an untruth…) It turns out that the photograph was placed in NASA’s archive of Skylab photographs. But nobody had noticed. So NASA won its argument with the intelligence community over the photograph. The photograph is published above.