OuterTek launches were an event. Their webcasts were top-notch, with production values rivaling that of a cable news show. All of their launches, either out at the Cape or on the West Coast a few hours north of Parkowski at Vandenberg Space Force Base, were well attended. Each launch was captured on video on the live webcasts starting about half an hour before T-0 and ending when the satellite was either in the correct transfer orbit or its final orbit.
Parkowski had a suspicion that some more evidence supporting her theory could be found in this area. She wanted to see if there were any slips in the webcast as to the trajectory — she knew for a fact that the version she had seen contained the public, nominal one rather than the secret one that the launch company hadn’t given to the government. OuterTek’s security, as she had found, was surprisingly lax, and she assumed that the creative types that made up the company’s public affairs and media types would be no different.
She was right.
Everything was accessible from the SH-21 media folder. Videos of the launch pad, webcast graphics, scripts, it was all there for her to poke through. Parkowski looked up to see if DePresti was coming back but there was still no sign of him.
The videos on the webcast were all exactly what she had expected. But, once again, Parkowski had a feeling that there was something here, a clue she just wasn't seeing yet. OuterTek was slick, but they weren’t that slick. The “BK” notes in the Mosu tool were a huge security violation, but the launch service provider just didn’t seem to care. If they were that careless in their engineering documentation, she knew that their media people had to be even more so.
She started opening up the video files’ properties, looking for some kind of connection to Bronze Knot or the parts switch, but again there were none.
Maybe the public relations people were smarter than she thought.
Parkowski switched to a view with an expanded list of properties and something jumped out at her.
Almost all of the video files were created on the same date: June 26, the same date as the launch.
But a small subset of them had
She wrinkled her nose. That didn’t make any sense.
Parkowski opened one of them up. It was an internal view of the second stage’s fuel tank. The supercooled RP-1 glowed blue as it rippled inside of the large volume.
The video was hours long, with a T-count displayed on the bottom, overlaid over the footage from the camera located inside of the tank near the flow valve. Not much happened until the stage separation occurred. Then, Parkowski could see the fuel slowly flow out of the tank until the first burn was over. Small globules of RP-1 then floated around as the second stage coasted, waiting for the next burn of the engine.
In theory, this video should have taken place the same day in June as the launch. Instead, it showed a March date on the timestamp at the bottom right — the same one that was in the “last modified” field in the properties page in the directory.
Parkowski went back and checked the launch schedule. The date matched an OuterTek launch of a Kuwaiti communication satellite. The video was included in the webcast itself as the presenters switched between feeds inside and outside of the fairing with those from the fuel and LOx tanks.
Why would a video from another launch be included with those from the SH-21 webcast?
There were other videos that she flipped through. One was that of the payload stack, consisting of the two ACHILLES robots and their associated gear on top of the lander and the relay satellite, sitting on top of the PAF. Parkowski watched as they separated over a stormy, orange Venus as the lander sped towards the surface while the relay satellite drifted off into its synchronous orbit.
She checked the date. May 31.
That made no sense. It had taken the ILIAD probe months to get to Venus, but this video was from
There had to be some kind of mistake.
Parkowski changed tactics again and started flipping through the launch notes from the OuterTek mission manager.
Again, at first glance, nothing was out of the ordinary.
The OuterTek team had worked closely with the government and Aering on the launch campaign. Each day, at the end of the workday, they had an end-of-day meeting between the three parties to provide status and make sure that they were all on the same page. Her boyfriend’s name appeared often as the GMIM, working between the Aering team both at the Cape and back in El Segundo and OuterTek.
She went through them temporally, working from the oldest to the newest.
Oddly, as they got closer to launch, the notes became less complex and informative, which was counterintuitive to Parkowski. She would have thought they would have had more issues, not fewer.
Then, she discovered another folder.
