Phantom Head Sidebar from “Space Year 1991”

Phantom Head Sidebar from Space Year 1991

The following is an excerpt from the magazine Space Year 1991, rewritten for the Bible Black scenario. The magazine is genuine, and may be ordered from Amazon.com. A PDF of the following handout is available to players as “Text—Phantom Head Sidebar from Space Year 1991.” An actual screenshot of the original article follows this fictionalized excerpt.

Human skull flown on Shuttle

MEDICAL RESEARCH took an interesting turn when a human skull was flown aboard STS-28/Columbia. It took about six months for this information to reach the general public, as the skull was flown on a secret Department of Defense mission before its carriage on the civilian STS-31/Discovery Hubble Space Telescope deployment mission in 1990 lifted the veil of secrecy. The skull was lost to science on its third mission, the tragic STS-36/Atlantis flight in 1990, also a secret DoD mission.

That veil — for reasons best known to the DoD — extended to on-board medical activities, even though these did not in themselves pose any national security risk. Known as the Phantom Head, the 11-pound human skull was the primary element of a Detailed Supplementary Objective designated SO 469 and entitled Inflight Radiation Dose Distribution. DSOs take many different forms and are an integral part of secondary pay-load activities on Shuttle missions. This particular experiment was a joint NASA/DoD investigation to study the penetration of radiation into the cranial cavity. Data will be vital to planners of Space Station Freedom orbital operations which will subject astronauts to extended radiation exposure.

The skull belonged to a person who donated their body to medical science, but had no knowledge that it might be flown into orbit. Based on its small size, the skull was probably that of a female. The Phantom Head was a commercially-available model used in clinical and research settings. It was covered and filled with a plastic material specially formulated to be radio-equivalent to human skin and tissue. The Phantom Head measured about six inches deep, by eight inches deep, by ten inches high and was for its space flights sliced into ten layers mounted on a plastic base. The layers are marked from zero to nine, beginning at the top of the head.

Hundreds of thermoluminescent dosimeters were located throughout the head. Plastic nuclear track detectors were placed between each of the skull’s layers.
The dosimeters and detectors measured heavy-ion primary radiation and secondary radiation fragments, thus recording radiation exposures at both skin and depth levels.

Other flight equipment employed in the DSO 469 experiment included a passive photon spectrometer, an electronic radiation counter, polyethylene spheres (known as ‘Bonner Spheres’) for measuring neutron fluctuations, and activation foils. Ground support equipment included a thermo-luminescent dosimeter reader, a plastic nuclear track detector measurement instrument, an IBM-compatible personal computer and low-level counting room and radioactivity measuring instrumentation.

The Phantom Head was stowed in a mid-deck locker aboard the Shuttle during ascent and re-entry. Once in orbit, astronauts mounted the head on the Orbiter’s starboard wall at the foot of an astronaut’s sleeping bag using Velcro patches. The head was stored in a fire-retardant Nomex pouch while in the mid-deck locker and remained in the pouch when mounted. All three space flights had carried the head into orbits characterized by a higher-than-usual radiation environment. STS-28 launched to a 57-degree inclination; STS-36 went to 62 degrees; and STS-31, although it only launched to the Shuttle’s standard 28.5-degree-inclination orbit, climbed to a record altitude (for the Shuttle) of 330 nautical miles.

After its first two flights into space, the skull was immediately flown from the Edwards, California landing site back to Johnson Space Center in Texas for detailed analysis at NASAs Medical Sciences Division there.

Alderson Research Laboratories of Stanford, Connecticut began manufacturing phantom models in the 1950s. In 1989, it sold various elements of the business, including the manufacturing of the skull-based research articles, to Phantom Laboratory of Salem, New York. The U.S. Air Force had loaned this particular model to NASA.

The Phantom Skull was presumably destroyed during the STS-36/Atlantis crash, although the wreckage from this tragic incident remains classified by the DoD.
Future plans include flying the torso of a human cadaver aboard the Shuttle, to verify laboratory predictions as to internal-organ radiation dosage. The torso would presumably be strapped into a refrigerated cell within the payload bay.

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Last Modified: 1 November 2025
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