Author Topic: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite  (Read 356768 times)

Offline Star One

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #620 on: 02/10/2019 07:53 pm »
I’ve included this article for sake of completeness as it talks about how this kind of imagery fitted in with that provided by aircraft and satellites.

Quote
High-resolution photoreconnaissance satellites became operational several years later.  GAMBIT-1, launched 38 times from 1963-1967, eventually achieved a best resolution of two feet.  The follow-on GAMBIT-3 flew 54 missions from 1966-1984.  Its maximum resolution remains classified, except for the fact that it was initially greater than two feet and apparently improved to better than one foot. HEXAGON, which flew 19 missions from 1971-1984, had a best resolution of two feet.[5]  The resolution obtained by KENNEN, the first digital return system initially launched in 1976, remains classified.   

Although the high-resolution imagery from the U-2 and satellites satisfied many technical intelligence requirements, it rarely captured certain critical targets. These included intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and shorter-range surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.  Even before their deployment in silos beginning in the mid-1960s, these vehicles were stored in buildings at their launch complexes.  Submarines carried their ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in tubes and their cruise missiles in protective housings.  Silos housed anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs).  The U-2 and, later, satellites, frequently photographed aircraft on runways and aprons.  However, they could not capture the underside, engine inlets, and certain other important features.  Similarly, these overhead platforms were limited in some respects in photographing armor, artillery, mobile radars, and other ground force equipment.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence-russia-programs/2018-12-17/communist-parades-intelligence-target-cold-war

Online Blackstar

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #621 on: 02/18/2019 07:05 pm »
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3662/1

Above Top Secret: the last flight of the Big Bird

by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, February 18, 2019

By the early 1980s, the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite program was scheduled to end. Only a few more of the heavy, schoolbus-sized spacecraft were under construction. Efforts by senior Air Force officials within the Los Angeles office of the highly classified National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to either build more spacecraft, or use the Space Shuttle to recover and relaunch one or more of the last satellites, had been rejected as impractical or too expensive. The NRO leadership in Washington instead chose to stretch out the remaining launches, keeping the satellites in orbit longer and taking more images. The HEXAGON had a powerful dual camera system also known as the KH-9 and capable of imaging almost the entire Soviet landmass in a single mission. Because of that, the 20th and last HEXAGON spacecraft, scheduled for launch in spring 1986, became very important to many members of the intelligence community.

But what has not been known until now is that the last HEXAGON spacecraft acquired an additional top secret sensor and intelligence mission in addition to its primary job of taking medium resolution photography of vast amounts of territory. The spacecraft was also supposed to fly twice as long as any previous HEXAGON mission. On April 26, 1986, the last HEXAGON spacecraft—which was euphemistically referred to as “the big bird” by launch crews—lifted off atop a Titan 34D at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

And then the rocket blew up.





Offline Star One

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #622 on: 02/18/2019 10:19 pm »
Excellent and informative article. Thanks.

I see KENNEN gets plenty of mentions but I suppose the declassification of the early days of that program is still somewhere in the government labyrinth.

Offline gwiz

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #623 on: 02/19/2019 10:35 am »
Can't remember my source (Blackstar?), but I've a note that there were a couple more classified payloads on Hexagon 20 called Onyx and LORRI 2.
« Last Edit: 02/19/2019 10:36 am by gwiz »

Offline Star One

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #624 on: 02/19/2019 03:16 pm »
Can't remember my source (Blackstar?), but I've a note that there were a couple more classified payloads on Hexagon 20 called Onyx and LORRI 2.

Do you mean attached payloads or sub-satellites?

Offline gwiz

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #625 on: 02/19/2019 04:35 pm »
No information on that.

Offline Targeteer

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #626 on: 04/12/2019 04:02 am »
NRO Facebook post

This year, as part of our booth activities at the 35th #SpaceSymposium, we've brought along the Hexagon (KH-9) film take-up reel. The reel seen here is just one example of the technological innovation carried out over 57 months in the late 1960s by thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrators from across government and industry to create a new and revolutionary intelligence collection system that would usher in a new age of satellite photoreconnaissance.

"We didn't get to this point by accident; it was achieved through perseverance, technical competence and a lot of hard work," said the Honorable Edward C. Aldridge, undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, about the Hexagon program on July 12, 1983.
Best quote heard during an inspection, "I was unaware that I was the only one who was aware."

Online Blackstar

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #627 on: 04/12/2019 10:07 pm »
They have some artifacts that are not on display. Small things like this. I know of a couple of others that are intriguing (well, to me, anyway), and I will probably be writing about them in the future.
« Last Edit: 04/13/2019 02:43 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Jester

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« Last Edit: 07/03/2019 12:56 pm by Jester »

Offline libra

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #629 on: 12/22/2019 04:08 am »
still wondering about the Shuttle - KH-9 linkage and... fool's game.
We now know that the Hexagon pushed the Shuttle payload bay length to 60 ft in 1971.
 Yet the NRO decided circa 1975 Hexagon on Shuttle wasn't worth it ! 
So nice for NASA... they must have been appalled.

So the question remain -  why the heck did the NRO bothered with *Hexagon on Shuttle* in the first place ?

Note that the previous CORONA launched 144 times vs a mere 20 HEXAGON build.
That's 12 times less. In fact they traded quantity for quality.
Now Hexagon on Shuttle  only make sense if the NRO wanted to refurbish the new big and very expensive satellite.
So in a nutshell they traded 144 CORONA for Hexagon on Shuttle - only 20 build BUT some more missions through refurbishing... or shuttle basing: ZEUS and others.

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Offline Star One

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #631 on: 11/24/2020 09:28 pm »
This new video by Scott Manley seems most relevant to this thread:


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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #632 on: 11/24/2020 11:47 pm »
Hans Mark on the shuttle:
« Last Edit: 11/24/2020 11:48 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Star One

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KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #633 on: 11/25/2020 07:07 am »
Thanks for that rather intriguing. Was it the KH-11 under the redactions or something else I wonder like the offshoot project Misty.
« Last Edit: 11/25/2020 07:07 am by Star One »

Offline tonya

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #634 on: 11/25/2020 07:57 am »
I think the redacted payload might be Lacrosse.

Offline Star One

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #635 on: 11/25/2020 01:50 pm »
I think the redacted payload might be Lacrosse.
Good call. Now that’s a project I’d liked to see declassified in my lifetime if for no other reason than to learn about the related shuttle flights.

Online Blackstar

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #636 on: 11/25/2020 08:27 pm »
Note that the "GARWIN" mentioned in the document is most likely Richard Garwin, a scientific advisor. I previously mentioned him here:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23429.msg2150022#msg2150022


Offline Jim

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #637 on: 12/23/2020 06:22 pm »
I think the redacted payload might be Lacrosse.
Nope.  It didn't exist back then.
Look through C.P. Vick's sketches

Offline Skyrocket

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #638 on: 12/23/2020 06:48 pm »
I think the redacted payload might be Lacrosse.
Nope.  It didn't exist back then.
Look through C.P. Vick's sketches
The redacted non-compact payloads might likely be the CHALET/VORTEX or MAGNUM/ORION type SIGINT satellites, which needed a lot of payload space, but had significantly less mass than the HEXAGON.
« Last Edit: 12/23/2020 06:50 pm by Skyrocket »

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Re: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite
« Reply #639 on: 12/23/2020 08:51 pm »
"NASA was developing [blank] for their satellites, and I can't remember which ones, but it was GARWIN..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiMission_Modular_Spacecraft


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