CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite

[LittleBird]

Nice to see A Point In Time remastered in HD online:

Sadly it doesn't look like it's a remaster (new digital master created by rescanning the film), just the old scan with some upscaling applied.

Sorry, yes apologies for my imprecision. One wonders if NRO or CIA have even still got the original film-though i think the copy shown at the Corona meeting in 1996 at GWU was decent quality iirc.

To my eyes even the up scaling helps quite a bit in some places though, eg the demo of the KH4B dual camera by John Wolfe from 38:00 onwards


The BTL comments on YouTube explain the appearance of random footage early on that i must admit puzzled me.

[Blackstar]

For those of you who do not know, the NRO produced top secret documentaries about its big reconnaissance programs in the 1960s and 1970s: CORONA, GAMBIT and HEXAGON. I don't remember the length, and I'm too lazy to check, but I think that at least one of them is almost an hour. They are pretty good, and it's amazing to think that they were made for a very exclusive audience and sat locked away in a safe for decades.

It's a shame that these have not been remastered by NRO. But they may not have the original films, only video recordings of them. NRO has a strange relation to their history. I think the people who work on it right now are dedicated, but very under-resourced. And it is possible that they spend a lot of their time writing current classified history and can only spend a small percentage of their time working on getting old stuff declassified. A number of years ago they used to release mini-collections of documents on specific subjects, like the GAMBIT Dual Mode, or QUILL. I wish they would do that again, because there are probably some great subjects they could cover. I think that focusing on the space shuttle and the NRO in the 1970s would be a good topic.

[ExGeek]

There were also briefing films that you watched when you were first read onto a program or compartment.   These covered the history of the program, and of the compartmented SCI programs in general, along with a company-tailored add-on that covered local security policies (document control, safes, access, document handling & destruction, phones, etc).   

I still vividly remember my first, nearly 37 years later, watching from within what was essentially was a large bank vault.  Between that, the weird codewords being thrown about and going through numerous turnstiles and access doors to get to the briefing room, I felt like I was in an episode of Get Smart.

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4813/1

Things that almost go boom
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, June 17, 2024

According to the US Air Force, the first military satellite launch attempt at Vandenberg Air Force Base took place on February 28, 1959, with the successful orbiting of Discoverer 1. As usual, the reality is more complicated. Discoverer 1 most likely never made it into orbit, falling to Earth over Antarctica. Discoverer 1 had been preceded over a month earlier by another operation which was not publicly acknowledged and was known to a small community as “Discoverer Zero,” and nearly ended in tragedy.

On January 21, 1959, the first Discoverer spacecraft sat on its pad at Vandenberg awaiting launch. Discoverer was a cover story for the Corona reconnaissance satellite program. This was not a public launch event. It was not going to be like the embarrassing Vanguard launch a little over a year before. There was no network of TV cameras staring at the little rocket on the launch pad on the Pacific Coast, waiting to see it blow up and embarrass the United States Air Force. In fact, this launch attempt had not even been announced beforehand. If it reached orbit, the Air Force would announce that it was in orbit. That was it.

The Thor-Hustler rocket stood 78 feet (23.8 meters) tall, although it was rather insignificant amid the chaparral, sand dunes, and rolling mountains of the rugged central coast of California. The Pacific Ocean was a short walk away, breaking on jagged shore.

The payload at the top of the Hustler consisted primarily of test instruments under a nosecone. It bore little resemblance to the intended payload of later Discoverer missions, which would soon include a reentry vehicle designed to return to Earth.

The United States had blown up a lot of missiles and rockets in the previous two years. Failure was part of the business. In fact, people in the media and in the missile field had come up with a new euphemism for something that was difficult to do. They called it rocket science.

[Spiceman]

Inside the blockhouse the controllers had realized what was happening. Somehow the Hustler’s internal timer had been activated. The vehicle behaved as if the Thor had burned out after boosting it high into the atmosphere.

Now that's very interesting. Because this is the exact same failure mode as in the dreadful Nedelin disaster. Second stage of the R-16 was led to "believe" it was in space, hence no rocket nor launch pad below it: and fired. Triggering a colossal disaster that killed a few hundred pad workers.

In the investigation that followed, Air Force and Lockheed officials quickly determined what had gone wrong. Somehow there was a “sneak circuit” between the Hustler, Thor, and the blockhouse. This sneak circuit had activated the event sequencer, which commanded certain things to happen on the spacecraft at certain times and in specific order. This sneak circuit had crept into the system because nobody had been assigned the task of overseeing the interaction of all of the vehicle’s separate systems with the Thor and the systems in the blockhouse. There were people who ran full checks of the Hustler on the ground, but not in concert with the other systems.

Again, this looks quite similar to the Nedelin disaster.

The two incident similarities however stop there - mercifully for Vandenberg and its pad workers. Reading the article further, one can see two major differences.

First, there were only the bare minimum of people working in close proximity from the Thor : a handful of pad workers.

Secondly: the reactions in the firing bunker. The american reacted wisely and quietly, avoiding the disaster. In stark contrast, on October 24, 1960 the R-16 launch area was under severe pressure from Nedelin himself, who badly wanted that R-16 flying ASAP. My understanding is that the R-16 launch countdown was stopped at some point, except nobody checked the second stage, so it carried on its own internal countdown and fired.

[Blackstar]

Again, this looks quite similar to the Nedelin disaster.

The two incident similarities however stop there - mercifully for Vandenberg and its pad workers. Reading the article further, one can see two major differences.

First, there were only the bare minimum of people working in close proximity from the Thor : a handful of pad workers.

Secondly: the reactions in the firing bunker. The american reacted wisely and quietly, avoiding the disaster. In stark contrast, on October 24, 1960 the R-16 launch area was under severe pressure from Nedelin himself, who badly wanted that R-16 flying ASAP. My understanding is that the R-16 launch countdown was stopped at some point, except nobody checked the second stage, so it carried on its own internal countdown and fired.

Yes. I think another difference was that for the Neddelin disaster there were a lot of people around the rocket. For the Thor, there were less than two dozen, and maybe only a dozen.

[Targeteer]

https://twitter.com/NatReconOfc/status/1807143776109904265

[Blackstar]

Another NRO tweet that doesn't really know their own history. The KH-4 really involved two different camera systems, the J-1 and the J-3 carried on the KH-4B. I know that these are written by an intern, but I just wish they were a bit more precise.

[LittleBird]

Corona and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and what it couldn't see.

As I think the general topic of CORONA and Cuba was aired here fairly recently but I can't find where, and as I recently came across this interesting-looking article, here's a link to "Corona over Cuba: The Missile Crisis and the Early Limitations of Satellite Imagery Intelligence", Joseph W. Caddell JR, Intelligence and National Security, Volume 31, 2016 - Issue 3, Pages 416-438 ,   https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2015.1005495.

Article is paywalled but abstract and extensive footnotes aren't, and in latter we see that CORONA was also apparently not much use concerning the silos, er, back in the USSR ...

"It should be noted that, despite claims to the contrary, Corona did not provide any intelligence on activity at Soviet strategic sites and military preparedness during the Crisis itself. Ernest May, for example, states that ‘… [Corona] and related intelligence enabled the president and his associates to judge not only whether missile sites in the Soviet Union were making launch preparations, but also whether other types of Soviet forces were moving into position for offensive operations. On [25 October], for example, Kennedy's intelligence advisors could reassure him that, while some Soviet bloc armed forces were increasing their operational readiness, there were still not significant redeployments’ (Ernest R. May, ‘Strategic Intelligence and US Security: The Contributions of CORONA’, in Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.26.) Whatever the source of that information on 25 October – Humint, Sigint, or otherwise – it was not Corona. Mission 9046A, carrying a low-resolution (460 feet) KH-5 mapping camera system, was launched on 9 October and recovered on 13 October. The next camera-carrying Corona flight did not launch until 5 November. Any Corona-derived information on military sites inside the USSR available on 25 October would have been derived from Mission 9045 coverage. This data would have been more than three weeks old at the time and would have predated the public confrontation between the US and USSR over Cuba by at least two weeks (Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.238).""

[Blackstar]

Corona and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and what it couldn't see.

As I think the general topic of CORONA and Cuba was aired here fairly recently but I can't find where, and as I recently came across this interesting-looking article, here's a link to "Corona over Cuba: The Missile Crisis and the Early Limitations of Satellite Imagery Intelligence", Joseph W. Caddell JR, Intelligence and National Security, Volume 31, 2016 - Issue 3, Pages 416-438 ,   https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2015.1005495.

Article is paywalled but abstract and extensive footnotes aren't, and in latter we see that CORONA was also apparently not much use concerning the silos, er, back in the USSR ...

"It should be noted that, despite claims to the contrary, Corona did not provide any intelligence on activity at Soviet strategic sites and military preparedness during the Crisis itself. Ernest May, for example, states that ‘… [Corona] and related intelligence enabled the president and his associates to judge not only whether missile sites in the Soviet Union were making launch preparations, but also whether other types of Soviet forces were moving into position for offensive operations. On [25 October], for example, Kennedy's intelligence advisors could reassure him that, while some Soviet bloc armed forces were increasing their operational readiness, there were still not significant redeployments’ (Ernest R. May, ‘Strategic Intelligence and US Security: The Contributions of CORONA’, in Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.26.) Whatever the source of that information on 25 October – Humint, Sigint, or otherwise – it was not Corona. Mission 9046A, carrying a low-resolution (460 feet) KH-5 mapping camera system, was launched on 9 October and recovered on 13 October. The next camera-carrying Corona flight did not launch until 5 November. Any Corona-derived information on military sites inside the USSR available on 25 October would have been derived from Mission 9045 coverage. This data would have been more than three weeks old at the time and would have predated the public confrontation between the US and USSR over Cuba by at least two weeks (Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.238).""

That seems about right. But was there a DMSP in orbit at that time? I seem to remember (and I am too lazy at the moment to go look it up) that the military did benefit from weather satellite data.

[LittleBird]

Corona and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and what it couldn't see.

As I think the general topic of CORONA and Cuba was aired here fairly recently but I can't find where, and as I recently came across this interesting-looking article, here's a link to "Corona over Cuba: The Missile Crisis and the Early Limitations of Satellite Imagery Intelligence", Joseph W. Caddell JR, Intelligence and National Security, Volume 31, 2016 - Issue 3, Pages 416-438 ,   https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2015.1005495.

Article is paywalled but abstract and extensive footnotes aren't, and in latter we see that CORONA was also apparently not much use concerning the silos, er, back in the USSR ...

"It should be noted that, despite claims to the contrary, Corona did not provide any intelligence on activity at Soviet strategic sites and military preparedness during the Crisis itself. Ernest May, for example, states that ‘… [Corona] and related intelligence enabled the president and his associates to judge not only whether missile sites in the Soviet Union were making launch preparations, but also whether other types of Soviet forces were moving into position for offensive operations. On [25 October], for example, Kennedy's intelligence advisors could reassure him that, while some Soviet bloc armed forces were increasing their operational readiness, there were still not significant redeployments’ (Ernest R. May, ‘Strategic Intelligence and US Security: The Contributions of CORONA’, in Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.26.) Whatever the source of that information on 25 October – Humint, Sigint, or otherwise – it was not Corona. Mission 9046A, carrying a low-resolution (460 feet) KH-5 mapping camera system, was launched on 9 October and recovered on 13 October. The next camera-carrying Corona flight did not launch until 5 November. Any Corona-derived information on military sites inside the USSR available on 25 October would have been derived from Mission 9045 coverage. This data would have been more than three weeks old at the time and would have predated the public confrontation between the US and USSR over Cuba by at least two weeks (Day et al., Eye in the Sky, p.238).""

That seems about right. But was there a DMSP in orbit at that time? I seem to remember (and I am too lazy at the moment to go look it up) that the military did benefit from weather satellite data.

I'm pretty sure you are right, wondering where we have seen it-possibly Cargill Hall's DMSP history ?

[Blackstar]

I'm pretty sure you are right, wondering where we have seen it-possibly Cargill Hall's DMSP history ?

There was a launch a few months earlier. Gunter uses DSAP for these early satellites, but I would not use that designation. I'd go with P-35.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/dmsp-1.htm