Author Topic: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite  (Read 77259 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #200 on: 04/18/2023 01:12 pm »
There are a few new things in my Space Review article on balloons. The story about how the GENETRIX balloons developed the air-catch technology, and the WS-461L balloons developed the panoramic camera has long been known.

What's new is how starting in 1963 the CIA investigated using balloon payloads to detect Soviet missile telemetry. This was around the same time that the first PUNDIT telemetry intercept satellites were being launched. There were four PUNDIT satellites and two SAVANT satellites (from 1963-1969). They apparently were really limited, because it was rare for them to be overhead when the Soviets launched a missile. A very high altitude balloon could loiter for along time, collecting signals. However, the program, known as AKINDLE, was not approved.

Another new bit of information is how high-altitude balloons were used to carry large optics systems high over Arizona to test atmospheric effects. One of these was a leftover camera from the KH-6 LANYARD reconnaissance satellite program.

Finally, there's the story about the Soviet aircraft developed in the late 1970s/early 1980s, supposedly to shoot down American reconnaissance balloons. There is no evidence that the US was operating reconnaissance balloons at that time, and the Soviets never displayed any balloons that they shot down. I suspect that there were no balloons, but Soviet officials were justifying these systems "just in case" the Americans started launching balloons again.

Offline Larry Golo

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #201 on: 04/18/2023 06:44 pm »
Interesting reading. Didn't knew so much had been done with balloons by the spooks.
Wonder if that peculiar company was part of the picture. They flew balloons up to 50 km high and established a few records that still stand to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winzen_Research
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Offline edzieba

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #202 on: 04/19/2023 07:26 am »
Is there any indication any of the (built or proposed) balloons were dirigible rather than jetstream-riders?

Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #203 on: 04/19/2023 11:30 am »
Is there any indication any of the (built or proposed) balloons were dirigible rather than jetstream-riders?

Not that I know of. I presume that a dirigible has altitude limitations because it is carrying that structure.

Offline Larry Golo

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #204 on: 04/19/2023 03:43 pm »
There are a few new things in my Space Review article on balloons. The story about how the GENETRIX balloons developed the air-catch technology, and the WS-461L balloons developed the panoramic camera has long been known.

What's new is how starting in 1963 the CIA investigated using balloon payloads to detect Soviet missile telemetry. This was around the same time that the first PUNDIT telemetry intercept satellites were being launched. There were four PUNDIT satellites and two SAVANT satellites (from 1963-1969). They apparently were really limited, because it was rare for them to be overhead when the Soviets launched a missile. A very high altitude balloon could loiter for along time, collecting signals. However, the program, known as AKINDLE, was not approved.

Another new bit of information is how high-altitude balloons were used to carry large optics systems high over Arizona to test atmospheric effects. One of these was a leftover camera from the KH-6 LANYARD reconnaissance satellite program.

Finally, there's the story about the Soviet aircraft developed in the late 1970s/early 1980s, supposedly to shoot down American reconnaissance balloons. There is no evidence that the US was operating reconnaissance balloons at that time, and the Soviets never displayed any balloons that they shot down. I suspect that there were no balloons, but Soviet officials were justifying these systems "just in case" the Americans started launching balloons again.

I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor.
When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there
- Semipalatisnk
- Baikonur
- Sary Shagan
Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979...

The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.
« Last Edit: 04/19/2023 03:46 pm by Larry Golo »
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Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #205 on: 04/19/2023 07:13 pm »
I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor.
When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there
- Semipalatisnk
- Baikonur
- Sary Shagan
Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979...

The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.


The two systems that the CIA was trying to push in the 1960s were gathering telemetry signals from missile tests, and some kind of photographic system. The former makes a lot of sense (with caveats) because the satellites were over the missile sites for such short periods of time that the chance of catching a test as it was happening was really small. I believe that in one of my SIGINT articles I quoted a document about that probability. It was so low that it's surprising that they even tried doing it. It's also surprising that at least a few times it worked. My suspicion is that in the cases that it worked the Soviets may have been sending the signals from the rocket while it was still on the pad and were leaving it on for long periods of time. You can see how a balloon that could slowly drift for days near a launch site might be a better collector. The caveat is that I have no idea how the CIA would have gotten the data back.

The photo-reconnaissance mission makes little sense to me. The camera system would be heavier and harder to retrieve. Available documents indicate that Cuba could be one target, which makes more sense because the balloon would get out over the ocean relatively quickly. China and the USSR still had the same problems as USAF/CIA encountered with the earlier balloon programs.

But they were trying to gather intelligence any way possible, and balloons could possibly close some of the gaps left by satellites.

Offline edzieba

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #206 on: 04/20/2023 07:44 am »
Is there any indication any of the (built or proposed) balloons were dirigible rather than jetstream-riders?

Not that I know of. I presume that a dirigible has altitude limitations because it is carrying that structure.
I was thinking more non-rigid dirigibles, either gondola clusters (e.g. JP Aerospace's vehicles) or hydrid non-rigids. There was plenty of non-black work on airships around that time, including oddities like boundary layer control (embedding the propulsion system within the envelope), but little actually flown publicly.
My scepticism over this actually being attempted is less on achieving mass-to-altitude, and more that being able to steer a balloon is not much good if you are not also able to navigate it. This would be too high an altitude for TERCOM (well above multiple cloud layers, little differential due to parallax) and predating compact GNSS receivers (TRANSIT receivers were closer to container-sized than handheld). Fully automated star acquisition, identification, and tracking systems did not work out so well for the contemporaneous stellar-inertial systems (e.g. the Snark) with simpler ballistic or near-ballistic trajectories and much shorter flight times.

Offline Targeteer

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #207 on: 05/31/2023 11:09 am »
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=574015784916783&set=a.164921892492843

National Reconnaissance Office
·
#TechTuesday 💡: It wasn't easy catching Corona's film buckets by a plane in mid-air, especially when it was flying at 25,000 mph on orbit!  (from a comment "NRO PAO, it is 17,500 mph for earth orbital missions. 25,000 mph is lunar mission entry velocity")

To make film recovery more manageable, NRO invented a return system that used a heat shield and 5-stage parachute to reduce the film buckets' speed to 13 mph, making recovery much more manageable.
Best quote heard during an inspection, "I was unaware that I was the only one who was aware."

Online LittleBird

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #208 on: 06/01/2023 05:20 pm »
I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor.
When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there
- Semipalatisnk
- Baikonur
- Sary Shagan
Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979...

The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.


The two systems that the CIA was trying to push in the 1960s were gathering telemetry signals from missile tests, and some kind of photographic system. The former makes a lot of sense (with caveats) because the satellites were over the missile sites for such short periods of time that the chance of catching a test as it was happening was really small. I believe that in one of my SIGINT articles I quoted a document about that probability. It was so low that it's surprising that they even tried doing it. It's also surprising that at least a few times it worked. My suspicion is that in the cases that it worked the Soviets may have been sending the signals from the rocket while it was still on the pad and were leaving it on for long periods of time.

<snip>

But they were trying to gather intelligence any way possible, and balloons could possibly close some of the gaps left by satellites.

I share your surprise that intercepting telemetry from LEO ever worked, but not your surprise that they tried. Perry and Wheelon were in some sense staking their credibility on RHYOLITE and it is documented (e.g National Security Archive briefing books) that there was substantial pushback from people like McMillan, who was clearly imho not simply the empire builder/bureaucrat he is sometimes portrayed as but was also ex-Bell Labs and an expert in information theory. Unless in situ measurements  in space were available from LEO in the early sixties then the modelling of what RHYOLITE could do would be dependent purely on what could be seen from Turkey etc. There is also some evidence of an iterative process with these TELINT P-11s, I posted a bit about this and will add link when I find it. [Edit: see https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2294079#msg2294079 and grab below]

PS I am thinking not just of the characteristics of the signal, but of the all important noise background.
« Last Edit: 06/02/2023 12:52 pm by LittleBird »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #209 on: 06/01/2023 06:11 pm »
I've been researching the crisis reconnaissance subject lately. There was a push in 1970-1971, mainly by the State Department, to develop a crisis reconnaissance satellite. Multiple options were studied, all of them were ultimately rejected. The impetus at this time seems to have been (don't quote me) concern that a Middle East ceasefire agreement was ending, and State wanted the ability to detect if hostilities were flaring up. For those of you unfamiliar with the history, Israel and Egypt in particular were battling each other and taking shots at each other during the late 1960s into the early 1970s (with big wars in 1967 and 1973).

The reconnaissance backdrop to this was that the NRO was moving towards making a decision to develop a near-real-time reconnaissance satellite. Ultimately, they made the decision in November 1971 to develop the KH-11 KENNEN, which was first launched in late 1976. But although that was the ongoing discussion, State really wanted to know if there was an interim solution that could happen before 1976. The answer was yes, but it probably would not be available until 1973 or 1974, so nothing was going to solve the immediate need that State had.

The reason I'm posting this in the CORONA thread is that what's interesting is how they looked at different options for using CORONA for this purpose. The main option was keeping a CORONA satellite ready for launch at very short notice. If there were indications that things were heating up, somebody could order the launch of a CORONA and then get imagery back in a few days. Not the best, but the cheapest and most immediately available option.

What I had not realize was just how much NRO had looked into CORONA launch readiness. They had actually held CORONA's in launch reserve since the mid-1960s, and apparently adjusted that readiness rate a few times. The problem was that holding a CORONA ready to launch in a short period of time cost more money than holding one in readiness to launch in a longer period of time. I don't have details of why, but you can guess that it includes things like paying contractors overtime to have people at the launch site and so on.

I may share more on this in the future. It's not what I'm focusing on, but it's showing up in the documents.

Online catdlr

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #210 on: 06/01/2023 10:31 pm »
I am going off-topic (somewhat) with another use of the CORONA data used for the Climate Change study.

How the CIA Secretly Spied On Climate Change - The MEDEA Project

« Last Edit: 06/01/2023 10:33 pm by catdlr »
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Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #211 on: 06/02/2023 12:17 am »
I am going off-topic (somewhat) with another use of the CORONA data used for the Climate Change study.

How the CIA Secretly Spied On Climate Change - The MEDEA Project


The video shows VP Al Gore speaking in front of a CORONA vehicle (actually only part of it is actual hardware and the rest is a mockup). I was at that event in 1995. Found out it was happening and managed to get myself invited. Gore was a smart guy, but he had an odd way of speaking. After being asked a question, he would take a long pause before answering. Somebody I knew joked that it was because he was waiting for the cassette tape with the answer to slide into position.

There were a number of projects to use CORONA and later data for environmental research. That included things like counting penguin populations and whale migrations.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #212 on: 06/02/2023 02:47 am »

He's older than that, it's probably a jukebox.

My friend was referencing those big data storage units that used to be connected to supercomputers. Really cool.

Gore was just stiff. It was weird. The people around me were starting to laugh at his long pauses. He did push the CORONA declassification because of his interest in Earth science. That's what his speech at that event was about. After he left everybody else followed out (they kept us in the building for a few minutes until his motorcade departed), and then my friend and I were left alone with the CORONA. We looked at it trying to figure out how it worked. This was before any real documentation on it had been released. Later the CIA co-hosted a big CORONA symposium at George Washington University. I helped get that to GWU. That was pretty cool.

Online LittleBird

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #213 on: 06/02/2023 07:07 am »

He's older than that, it's probably a jukebox.

My friend was referencing those big data storage units that used to be connected to supercomputers. Really cool.

And not my old Sony, below ... I'm surprised ;-)

Seriously though the ones hung off Crays were great, weren't they, I seem to remember  they had/have one in the National Cr****logical Museum ?

Quote

Gore was just stiff. It was weird. The people around me were starting to laugh at his long pauses. He did push the CORONA declassification because of his interest in Earth science. That's what his speech at that event was about. After he left everybody else followed out (they kept us in the building for a few minutes until his motorcade departed), and then my friend and I were left alone with the CORONA. We looked at it trying to figure out how it worked. This was before any real documentation on it had been released. Later the CIA co-hosted a big CORONA symposium at George Washington University. I helped get that to GWU. That was pretty cool.

You did and it was. Happy days, eh ?
« Last Edit: 06/02/2023 07:09 am by LittleBird »

Offline edzieba

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #214 on: 06/02/2023 07:44 am »
What I had not realize was just how much NRO had looked into CORONA launch readiness. They had actually held CORONA's in launch reserve since the mid-1960s, and apparently adjusted that readiness rate a few times. The problem was that holding a CORONA ready to launch in a short period of time cost more money than holding one in readiness to launch in a longer period of time. I don't have details of why, but you can guess that it includes things like paying contractors overtime to have people at the launch site and so on.
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only. By '69 Program 437 as a whole was shuttered, but it at least means at time time they were looking at Crisis Reconnaissance options, a "ready Corona" was a capability that was not just theoretical, but one that had been demonstrated operationally and had experienced staff and contractors available (albeit Hurricane Celeste had effectively destroyed the existing launch facilities at Johnston Island). It's more of a surprise that they estimated it would have taken until '73 to return that capability, unless they outright ruled out occupying an existing Titan pad and demanded construction of a new one before standing up that capability.

Online LittleBird

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #215 on: 06/02/2023 08:29 am »
What I had not realize was just how much NRO had looked into CORONA launch readiness. They had actually held CORONA's in launch reserve since the mid-1960s, and apparently adjusted that readiness rate a few times. The problem was that holding a CORONA ready to launch in a short period of time cost more money than holding one in readiness to launch in a longer period of time. I don't have details of why, but you can guess that it includes things like paying contractors overtime to have people at the launch site and so on.
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only. By '69 Program 437 as a whole was shuttered, but it at least means at time time they were looking at Crisis Reconnaissance options, a "ready Corona" was a capability that was not just theoretical, but one that had been demonstrated operationally and had experienced staff and contractors available (albeit Hurricane Celeste had effectively destroyed the existing launch facilities at Johnston Island). It's more of a surprise that they estimated it would have taken until '73 to return that capability, unless they outright ruled out occupying an existing Titan pad and demanded construction of a new one before standing up that capability.

Would the position of JI in mid-Pacific be a bug or a feature in a crisis-or both ? A Russian strike against it would be less risky than against VAFB on US mainland, in one sense, but the logistics for US recon sat use from there would have been a pain, surely ?

Also launching from a site that had been previously associated with ASATs in a tense period might seem rather inflammatory/confusing ?

It'd be interesting to know if any thought was given to making the putative crisis satellites any more overt or tacitly telling the Russians via SALT/ABM etc channels.

Interested to see that JI was a staging point for the Nixon entourage when they met Apollo 11 (below) https://nixontapes.org/pdd/1969-07-01_31.pdf... not sure if AF-1 ever returned after July 69 but it suggests the runway could cope with biggish planes, anyway ;-)
« Last Edit: 06/02/2023 08:34 am by LittleBird »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #216 on: 06/02/2023 12:54 pm »
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.

That's a very interesting thought. 437 was designed to be ready fast. Of course, Thor was designed to be fired on short notice too. The question this raises is what was the tall post in the tent for CORONA readiness? Probably not the Thor, probably the Agena or the camera system or something associated with them, like the computer/sequencer.

The docs I have are only high-level policy documents and not technical documents about the system. So I'm not going to be able to get at an answer. I did just see something that indicated that one way they could get to a higher readiness rate was with two vehicles at two pads at different states of readiness. So (guessing) something like allow one to count down to a few days before launch and hold it there, then ready the other one and start it counting down days to launch. Then launch the first one, and hold the second one in a readiness state.

CORONA was not expensive, but they were always making choices based upon how much they had to spend. I don't think that the money became a bigger concern until the 1970s.

Online LittleBird

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #217 on: 06/02/2023 01:06 pm »
I've been researching the crisis reconnaissance subject lately. There was a push in 1970-1971, mainly by the State Department, to develop a crisis reconnaissance satellite. Multiple options were studied, all of them were ultimately rejected. The impetus at this time seems to have been (don't quote me) concern that a Middle East ceasefire agreement was ending, and State wanted the ability to detect if hostilities were flaring up. For those of you unfamiliar with the history, Israel and Egypt in particular were battling each other and taking shots at each other during the late 1960s into the early 1970s (with big wars in 1967 and 1973).


I vaguely remember those ;-) ... Seriously though the US nuclear alert of October 1973, covered on British news radio, made a real impression on me as an 11 year old ... and on Ted Heath ... see grab below from Richard Aldrich's "GCHQ".

I think the ceasefire episode of particular importance to KH-11 decision  was actually the one in mid-1970, discussed in the KH-11 thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29545.msg2377606#msg2377606. And I still think that the story that it was not just the perenially sidelined State and Rogers,  but Kissinger himself who allegedly wanted fast pictures, could explain the difference it made. Not a story I've been yet been able to pin down completely but an intriguing moment for sure.
« Last Edit: 06/03/2023 11:07 am by LittleBird »

Offline Jim

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #218 on: 06/02/2023 01:19 pm »
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.

That's a very interesting thought. 437 was designed to be ready fast. Of course, Thor was designed to be fired on short notice too. The question this raises is what was the tall post in the tent for CORONA readiness? Probably not the Thor, probably the Agena or the camera system or something associated with them, like the computer/sequencer.

The docs I have are only high-level policy documents and not technical documents about the system. So I'm not going to be able to get at an answer. I did just see something that indicated that one way they could get to a higher readiness rate was with two vehicles at two pads at different states of readiness. So (guessing) something like allow one to count down to a few days before launch and hold it there, then ready the other one and start it counting down days to launch. Then launch the first one, and hold the second one in a readiness state.

CORONA was not expensive, but they were always making choices based upon how much they had to spend. I don't think that the money became a bigger concern until the 1970s.

There likely was limit on how long the Agena could be loaded with propellants.   Delta II was 30 days. 

Offline hoku

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Re: CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #219 on: 06/02/2023 02:43 pm »
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.

That's a very interesting thought. 437 was designed to be ready fast. Of course, Thor was designed to be fired on short notice too. The question this raises is what was the tall post in the tent for CORONA readiness? Probably not the Thor, probably the Agena or the camera system or something associated with them, like the computer/sequencer.

The docs I have are only high-level policy documents and not technical documents about the system. So I'm not going to be able to get at an answer. I did just see something that indicated that one way they could get to a higher readiness rate was with two vehicles at two pads at different states of readiness. So (guessing) something like allow one to count down to a few days before launch and hold it there, then ready the other one and start it counting down days to launch. Then launch the first one, and hold the second one in a readiness state.

CORONA was not expensive, but they were always making choices based upon how much they had to spend. I don't think that the money became a bigger concern until the 1970s.

There likely was limit on how long the Agena could be loaded with propellants.   Delta II was 30 days.
In 1965 the "CORONA SYSTEM PERFORMANCE DESIGN REQUIREMENTS GENERAL SPECIFICATION" defined a maximum on-pad "hold time" of 20 days, within which the vehicle could be launch within 24 hr.

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/CAL-Records/Cabinet2/DrawerC/2%20C%200008.pdf

LMSC-1414870 specified lifetimes of AGENA components, after which they should be replaced (disposed), or a vehicle demate would be required. Secondary batteries could be recharged, but primary batteries had a limited "Wet Stand Life" of around 30 days, and then required replacement. Engine lifetime after being exposed to propellants was 15 days.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660009137/downloads/19660009137.pdf

 

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