CORONA: THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHIC RECONNAISSANCE SATELLITE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP76B00734R000100140006-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 68
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 5, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: January 4, 1971
• Content Type: REPORT

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4 January 1971
CORONA: The First Photographic Reconnaissance Satellite
The U-2, which began operating in the fall of 1956, was
expected to have a relatively short operational life in over-
flying the Soviet Union--perhaps no more than a year or two.
That expectation was based less on the likelihood of the Soviets
perfecting a means of shooting it down than on their ability to
develop a radar surveillance network capable of reliably tracking
the U-2. With accurate 'tracking data in hand, the Soviets could
file diplomatic protests with enough evidence in support of them
to lead to political pressures to discontinue the overflights.
For nearly four years, the U-2 ranged over much of the world,
although only sporadically over the Soviet Union. The effectiveness
of the Soviet radar network was such that each flight risked another
protest and another standdown. Clearly, some means had to be
found for accelerating the initial operational capability of a
less vulnerable successor to the U-2. Fortunately, by the time
NRO review(s) completed.
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Francis Gary Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960
(fortunate for the intelligence community, that is--not for Powers),
an alternative means of carrying out photographic reconnaissance
over the Soviet Union was approaching operational readiness.
On 19 August 1960, just 110 days after the downing of the last
U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union, the first successful air catch
was made near Hawaii of a capsule of exposed film ejected from a
photographic reconnaissance satellite that had completed seven
'passes over denied territory and 17 orbits of the earth.- The
feat was the culmination of four years of intensive and often
frustrating effort to build, launch, orbit, and realize an
intelligence product from a camera-carrying satellite.
At about the time the U-2 first began overflying the Soviet
Union in 19560 the.U.S. Air Force was embarking on the development
of a strategic reconnaissance weapons system employing orbiting
satellites in a variety of collection Configurations. The program,,
which was designated WS-117L, had its origins in 1946 when a
requirement was placed on the RAND Corporation for a study of the
technical feasibility of orbiting artificial satellites. The
first real breakthrough had come in 1953 when the USAF Scientific
Advisory Board reported to the Air Staff that it was feasible to
produce relatively small and light-weight thermonuclear warheads.
As a result of that report.0the ATLAS ICBM program vas accorded
the highest priority in the Air Force.
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Since the propulsion required to place a satellite in orbit
is of the same general order of magnitude as that required to
launch an ICBM, the achievement of an ICBM-level of propulsion
made it possible to begin thinking seriously of launching orbital
satellites. Accordingly, General Operational Requirement No. 80
was levied in 1955 with the stated objective of providing
continuous surveillance of pre-selected areas of the world
to determine the status of a potential enemy's war-making capacity.
The Air Research and Development Command, which had inherited
the RAND study program in 1953, assigned the satellite project to
its Ballistic Missile Division. The development plan for WS-117L
was approved in July 1956, and the program got under way in October
1956 with the awarding of a contract to the Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation for the development and testing of the system.
The planning for WS-117L contemplated a family of separate
systems and subsystems employing satellites for the collection of
X1 photographic,
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intelligence. The program,
which was scheduled to extend beyond 1965, was divided ipto three
phases. Phase I, the THOR-boosted test series, was to begin in
November 1958. Phase II, the ATLAS-boosted test series, was
scheduled to begin in June 1959 with the objective of completing
the transition from the testing phase to the operational phase and
of proving the capability of the ATIAS.booster to launch heavy loads
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into space. Phase III, the operational series, was to begin in March,
1960 and was to consist of three progressively more sophisticated
systems: the Pioneer version (photographic and
Advanced version (photographic and
Surveillance version (photographic,
and the
the
It was expected that operational control of WS-117L would be
transferred to the Strategic Air Command with the initiation
of Phase III.
It was an ambitious and complex program that vas pioneering
in technical fields about which little was known. Not surprisingly,
, it had become apparent by the end of 1957 that the program was
running behind schedule. It also was in trouble from the stand-
point of security. The U-2 program was carried out in secret
from 1956 until May 1960--not from the Soviet Government, of
course, but the Soviets Chose to allow the program to remain a
secret from the general public (and from most of the official
community) in preference to publicizing its existence and thereby,
admitting that they lacked the means of defending their air space
against the high-flying U-2. WS-117L was undertaken as a classified
project, but its very size and the number of people involved made
it impossible to conceal the existence of the program for long.
The press soon began speculating on the nature of the program,
correctly identifying it as linvolving military reconnaissance
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satellites, and referring to is as BIG BROTHER and SPY IN THE SKY!
The publicity was of concern, because the development of WS-117L
was begun in a period when the international political climate
was hostile to any form of overflight reconnaissance.
It was against this background that the President's Board of
Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities submitted its semi-
annual report to the President on 24 October 1957. The Board
noted in its report that it was aware of two advanced reconnaissance
systems that were under consideration. One was a study then
in progress in the Central Intelligence Agency concerning the
feasibility of a manned reconnaissance aircraft designed for
greatly reduced radar cross-section; the other was WS-117L. The
Board recommended that an early review be made of new developments
in advanced reconnaissance systems to ensure that they were given
adequate consideration and received proper handling in the light
of then-existing and future intelligence requirements. The
Executive Secretary of the National Security Council on 28 October
notified the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central
Intelligence that the President had asked for a joint report from
them on the status of the advanced systems. Secretary Qparles
responded on behalf of himself and Mr. Dulles on 5 December with
a recommendation that, because of the extreme sensitivity of the
subject, details on the new systems be furnished through oral briefings.
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As a consequence of that proposal, which evidently was
accepted, there are no written records in CIA's Project CORONA
files bearing dates between .5 December 1957 and 21 March 1958.
It is clear, however, that major decisions were made and that
important actions were undertaken during the period. In brief,
it was decided that the photographic subsystem of WS-117L
offering the best prospect of early success would be separated
from WS-117L, be designated as Project CORONA, and be placed
under a joint CIA-Air Force management team--an approach that had
been so successful in covertly developing and operating the U-2.
The nucleus of such a team was then constituted as the
Development Projects Staff under the direction of Richard Bissell,
who was Special Assistant to the DCI for Plans and Development.
Bissell was designated as the senior CIA representative on the new
venture, and his Air Force counterpart was Brigadier General
Osmund Ritland, who, as Colonel Ritland, had served as Bissell's
first deputy in the early days of the Development Projects Staff
and was then Vice Commander of the Air Force Ballistic Missile
Division.
Bissell recalls that he first learned of the new program and of
the role intended for him in it "in an odd and informal way" from
Dr. Edwin Land with whom he had worked on the development of the U-2
reconnaissance system and who had come to head a panel of technical
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consultants informally known as the Land Panel. Bissell also recalls
that his early instructions were extremely vague: that the subsystem
was to be split off from WS-117L, that it was to be placed under
separate covert management, and that the pattern established for the
development of the U-2 was to be followed. One of the instructions,
however, was firm and precise: none of the funds for the new program
were to come from monies authorized for already approved Air Force
programs. This restriction, although seemingly clear at first
glance, later led to disagreement over its interpretation. CORONA
management expected that the boosters already approved for the THOR
test series of WS-117L would simply be diverted to the CORONA
program; this proved not to be so. As a consequence, CIA had to
go back to the President with an admission that the original project
proposal had understated the estimated cost and with a request for
more money.
Roughly concurrent with the decision to place one of the
WS-117L subsystems under covert management, the Department of
Defense realigned its structure for the management of space
activities. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was
established on 8 February 1958 and was granted authority over all
military space projects. The splitting off of CORONA from WS-117L
was accomplished by an ARM directive of 28 February 1958 assigning
responsibility for the WS-117L program to the Air Force and ordering
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that the proposed WS-117L interim reconnaissance system employing
THOR boost be dropped.
The ARA directive ostensibly cancelling the THOR-boosted
interim reconnaissance satellite was followed by all of the
notifications that would normally accompany the cancellation
of a military program. The word was passed officially within
the Air Force, and formal contract cancellations were sent out
to the prospective suppliers. There was much furore/when the
'cancellations went out: contractors were furious over the
suddenness of the action; Air Force personnel were thunderstruck
at the abandonment of the WS-117L photographic subsystem that seemed
to have the best chance of early success. Subsequent to the
cancellation, very limited numbers of individuals in the Air
Force and in the participating companies were cleared for Project
CORONA and were informed of the procedures to be followed in the
covert reactivation of the cancelled program.
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After Bissell and Ritland had worked out the arrangements
for the
they then began tackling the technical problems associated with the
design configuration they had inherited from WS-117L. The
subsystem in point contemplated the use of the THOR IRBM as the
first stage booster and, as a second stage, a Lockheed-modified
rocket engine that had been developed by Bell Aircraft for take-
off assist and auxiliary power applications in the B-58 HUSTLER
bomber. It was referred to as the HUSTLER engine during the
development phase of CORONA but soon came to be known as the AGENA.A.!'
the name it bears today. The plan called for spin stabilization
of the pod containing the payload, with the camera scanning as the
pod rotated. The camera was to have a focal length of six inches,
without image motion compensation, and would require the use of
fast film. The film was to be fed into a capsule, which would be
recovered from orbit. Ground resolution was expected to be poor
because of the short camera focal length and the grainy photography
yielded by fast film. The contractors who had been working on the
subsystem design were Lockheed on the space Vehicle, General
Electric on the re-entry body, and Fairchild on the camera.
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The initial intent of the CORONA managers was to proceed with
the configuration described above. As will be seen later, this was
not the configuration that was finally chosen. The ground
resolution attainable by it would not meet intelligence needs, and
by late March 1958 major complications had arisen in the technical
design of the Fairchild camera.
A three-day conference was held in San Mateo, California,
in late March among representatives of CIA) Air Force Ballistic
Missile Division, Lockheed, General Electric, and Fairchild. Their
discussion revealed that, while work was going forward, the design
was far from complete. The senior Lockheed representative reported
that they had investigated the possibility of building a satellite
vehicle shaped like a football, a cigar, or a sphere. They had
finally decided, for the original drawings at least, on a football-
shaped pod slightly elongated at each end to correct the center of
gravity. Discussion got onto the need for immediate contractual
arrangements with the various suppliers. Bissell remarked that he
was "faced with the
need estimates from
order to obtain the
way. The suppliers
the following week.
problem at present of being broke" and would
all of the suppliers as soon as possible in
necessary financing to get the program under
agreed to furnished the required estimates by
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The project quickly began taking formal shape following that
meeting. Within a span of about three weeks, approval of the program
and of its financing was obtained, and the design of the payload
configuration evolved into a concept quite different from the
spin-stabilized pod. In late March and early April, interest
shifted to a competitive design submitted by the ITEK Corporation,
which proposed a longer focal length camera scanning within an
earth-center stabilized pod. Bissell recalls that he personally
decided in favor of the ITEK design, but only after much agonizing.
The decision was plainly a difficult one to make, because it involved
moving from a proven and relatively simple method of stabilizatiolk
to one that was untried and was technically more difficult to
accomplish. Nor, for that matter, was the decision taken in a
single step.
Bissell's first project proposal, which was completed on
9 April 1958, requested approval for concurrent development of
both the Fairchild and the ITEK systems, with the Fairchild
configuration becoming operational first and the ITEK configuration
being developed as a follow-on system. Within two days, however,
Bissell had made the final decision to abandon the Fairchild
spin-stabilized configuration entirely. He rewrote the project
proposal, taking note of the earlier configuration and giving
his reasons for favoring the ITEK approach (principally the better
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resolution attainable, the lower overall cost, and the greater
potential for growth). The proposal was rewritten a second time,
retaining the ITEK configuration but raising the cost estimate
from
to
Of the total estimated cost,
represented "a rather arbitrary allowance" for 12 each
THOR boosters and Lockheed second stage vehicles and was to be
financed by ARPA through the Air Force. The remaining
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by CIA of the pods containing the
reconnaissance equipment and the recoverable film cassettes.
The final project proposal was forwarded to Brigadier General
Andrew J. Goodpaster, the President's Staff Secretary, on 16 April
1958 after having been reviewed by Mr. Roy Johnson and Admiral
John Clark of ARPA; Mr. Richard Horner, Assistant Secretary of the
Air Force for Research and Development; Brigadier General Osmund
Ritland, Vice Commander, Air Force Ballistic Missile Division; and
Dr. James Killian, Special Assistant to the President for Science
and Technology. The proposal was approved, although not in writing.
The only original record of the President's approval reportedly was
in the form Of a handwritten note on the back of an envelope by
General Cabell, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.
Although it May have been the original intent that CORONA
would be administered in a manner essentially the same as that of
the U-2 program, it actually began and evolved quite differently.
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It was a joint CIA-ARPA-Air Force effort, much as the U-2 was a
joint CIA-Air Force effort, but it lacked the central direction
that characterized the U-2 program. The project proposal described
the anticipated administrative arrangements, but it fell short of
clarifying the delineation of authorities. .It noted that CORONA
was being carried out under the authority of ABPA and CIA with the
support and participation of the Air Force. CIA's role was further
explained in terms of participating in supervision of the technical
development, especially as regards the actual reconnaissance
equipment, handling all
The work statement prepared for Lockheed, the prime,
contractor, on 25 April 1958 noted merely that technical direction
of the program was the joint responsibility of several agencies of
the Government.
The imprecise statements of who was to do what in connection
with CORONA allowed for a range of interpretation. Tbe vague
assignments of responsibilities caused no appreciable difficulties
in the eUrly years of CORONA when the joint concern was primarily
with producing as promised, but they later became a source of severe
friction between CIA and the Air Force over responsibility for
conducting the program. Not only was it unclear as to who was to do
what, it is difficult, in retrospect, even to discover who actually
did what. An officer who was with the program, in preparing a brief
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historical summary of it in early 1965, noted that: "It appears somewhat
mixed right now as to exactly who was doing detailed supervision of the
cameras and associated equipment." Bissell, upon reading the paper
recently, commented that if he had been the author he could have
written only that this was a matter that he and General Ritland
had handled together. He then expanded upon his remark with this
description of how the program was managed:
The program was started in a marvelously informal manner.
Ritland and I worked out the division of labor between the
two organizations as we went along. Decisions were made
jointly. There were so few people involved and their relations
were so close that decisions could be and were made quickly
and cleanly. We did not have the problem of having to make
compromises or of endless delays awaiting agreement. After
we got fully organized and the contracts had been let, we began
a system of management through monthly suppliers' meetings--
as we had done with the U-2. Ritland and I sat at the end
of the table, and I acted as chairman. The group included
two or three people from each of the suppliers. We heard reports
of progress and ventilated problems--especially those involving
interfaces among contractors. The program was handled in an
extraordinarily cooperative manner between the Air Force and
CIA. Almost all of the people involved on the Government side
were more interested in getting the job done than in claiming
credit or gaining control.
The schedule of the program, as it had been presented to the
CORONA group at its meeting in San Mateo in late March 1958, called
for a "count-down" beginning about the first of July 1958 and extending
for a period of 19 weeks. It was anticipated that the equipment
1
would be assembled, tested, and the first vehicle launched during
that 19-week period, which meant that the fabrication of the
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individual components would have had to be completed by 1 July.
By the time Bissell submitted his project proposal some three weeks
later, it had become apparent that the earlier tentative scheduling
was unrealistic. Bissell noted in his project proposal that it was
not yet possible to establish a firm schedule of delivery dates,
but that it appeared probable that the first firing could be
attempted no later than June 1959.
It is pertinent to note here that there was no expectation
in 1958 that CORONA would still be operating over a decade later.
The CORONA program got under way initially as an interim, short-
term, high-risk development to meet the intelligence community's
requirements for area search photographic reconnaissance pending
successful development of other, more sophisticated systems planned
for WS-117L. The original CORONA proposal anticipated the
acquisition of only 12 vehicles, noting that at a later date it
might be desirable to consider whether the program should be
extended--with or without further technological improvement.
Having settled on the desired configuration and having
received Presidential approval of the program and its financing,
the CORONA management team moved forward rapidly with the
contractual arrangements. The team of contractors for CORONA
differed from the team on the WS-117L subsystem as a consequence
of selecting ITEK's earth-center stabilized approach. ITEK was
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brought in as one of the two major subcontractors to Lockheed
(General Electric being the other). However, to soften the
financial blow to Fairchild, ITEK was made responsible for the
design and development of the camera subsystem with Fairchild
producing the camera under subcontract to ITEK. The final
contractors were selected on 25 April, and a work statement was
issued to Lockheed on that date. The contractors began systems
designs on 28 April and completed them and submitted them for
first review on 14 May. The designs were frozen on 26 July.
Thus, by mid-19580 the program was well down the road--on the
contractors' side--toward meeting the goal of a first launch no
later than mid-1959. The Government side, however, was running
into difficulties. The first had to do with money, the second
with cover, and the two were inextricably intertwined. The
cost estimate for the 12-vehicle program had assumed that
the cost of the THOR boosters would be absorbed by the Air Force.
by diverting them from the cancelled WS-117L subsystem. That
assumption proved to be incorrect. An additional
had to be found to pay for the 12 THORs. Further, it had been
decided that an additional four launch vehicles would be required
for testing of launch, orbit, and recovery procedures and that an
additional three would be required for biomedical launches in
support of the CORONA cover story. ARTA could not see its way clear
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to making DoD funds available merely for testing or for cover
support when there were other DoD space programs with pressing
needs for money. Consequently, CORONA management had to go back
to the President for approval of a revised estimate.
By August 1958, it had also become apparent to the project's
managers that the original, but as yet unannounced, cover story
conceived for the future CORONA launchings (an experimental program
within the first phase of WS-117L) was becoming increasingly
untenable. WS-117L had by then become the subject of fairly wide-
spread public speculation identifying it as a military reconnaissance
program. It was feared that linking CORONA to WS-117L in any way
would inevitably place the reconnaissance label on CORONA, and,
given the hostility of the international political climate to over-
flight reconnaissance, there was the risk that the policy level of
government might cancel the program if it should be so identified.
Some other story would have to be contrived that would dissociate
CORONA from WS-117L and at the same time account for multiple
launchings of stabilized vehicles in low polar orbits and with
payloads being recovered from orbit.
' It was decided, therefore, to separate the WS-117L photo
reconnaissance program into two distinct and ostensibly unrelated
series: one identified as DISCOVERER (CORONA - THOR boost) and the
other as SENTRY (later known as SAMOS - ATLAS boost). A press
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release announcing the initiation of the DISCOVERER series was
issued in mid-January 1959 identifying the initial launchings as
tests of the vehicle itself and later launchings as explorations
of environmental conditions in space. Biomedical specimens,
including live animals, were to be carried into space and their
recovery from orbit attempted.
The new CORONA cover concept, from which the press release
stemmed, called for a total of five biomedical vehicles, and three
of the five were committed to the schedule under launchings three,
four, and seven. The first two were to carry mice and the third
a primate. The two uncommitted vehicles were to be held in reserve,
in event of failure of the heavier primate vehicle. In further
support of the cover plan, AREA was to develop two radiometric
payload packages designed specifically to study navigation of space
vehicles and to Obtain data useful in the development of an early
25X1 warning system (the planned
. It might be
noted here that only one of the three planned animal-carrying missions
was actually attempted (as DISCOVERER III), and it was a failure.
ARPA did develop the radiometric payload packages, and they were
launched as DISCOVERERs XIX and XXI in late 1960 and early 1961.
The photo reconnaissance mission of CORONA necessitated a
near-polar orbit, either by launching to the north or to the south.
There are few otherwise suitable areas in the continental United
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States where this can be done without danger of debris from an
early in-flight failure falling into populated areas. Cooke Air
Force Base near California's Point Arguello met the requirement
for down-range safety, because the trajectory of a southward
launch from there would be over the Santa Barbara channel and the
Pacific Ocean beyond. Cooke was a natural choice, because it was
the site of the first Air Force operational missile training base
and also housed the 672nd Strategic Missile Squadron (THOR). Two
additional factors favored this as the launch area: the
manufacturing facilities and skilled personnel required were
In the near vicinity, and a southward launch would permit recovery
in the Hawaii area by initiating the ejection/recovery sequence as
the satellite passed over the Alaskan tracking facility. The
name was changed from Cooke to Vandenberg AB in October 1958.
Unlike the U-2 flights, launchings of satellites from U.S.
soil simply could not be concealed from the public. Even a booster
as small as the THOR (small, that is, in comparison with present-
day space boosters) launches with a thunderous roar that can be
heard for miles; the space vehicle transmits telemetry than can
be intercepted; and the vehicle can be detected in orbit by
radar skin-track. Although the fact of a launch having been made
could not be concealed, maintenance of the cover story for the
DISCOVERER series required that the launchings of the uniquely
configured photographic payloads be closed to observation by
unwitting personnel.
Vandenberg Was excellent as a launch site
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from many standpoints, but there was one feature of it that posed
a severe handicap to screening the actual launches from unwanted
observation: the heavily traveled Southern Pacific railroad
passes through it. The boosting and station-keeping capacity
of the early THOR/AGENA combination limited film supply to a one-
day mission consisting of 17 orbits, seven of which would pass
over denied territory. The requirements for daylight recovery
and for the seven denied area passes also to be during daylight and
with acceptable sun angles dictated a launch from Vandenberg in
the early afternoon. Trains passing through the area broke up
this afternoon launch window into a series of successive windows,
some Of which were of no more than a few minutes duration. Even
today, the program is plagued by having to time the launches to
occur during one of the intervals between passing trains.
The planned recovery sequence involved a series of maneuvers,
each of which had to be executed to near-perfection or recovery
would fail. First, the AGENA would be pitched down through 120
degrees to position the satellite recovery vehicle (SRV) for
retro-firing. Then the SRV would be separated from the AGENA and
be spin-stabilized by firing the spin rockets to maintain it in
the attitude given it by the AGENA. Next the retro-rocket would be
fired, slowing down the SRV into a descent trajectory. Then the
spin of the SRV would be slowed by firing the despin rockets.
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Next would come the separation of the retro-rocket thrust cone
followed by the heat shield and the parachute cover. The drogue
(or deceleration) chute would then deploy, and finally the main
chute would open to lower the capsule gently into the recovery area.
The primary recovery technique involved flying an airplane across
the top of the descending parachute, catching the chute or its
shrouds in a trapeze-like hook suspended beneath the airplane,
and then winching the recovery vehicle aboard. If the air catch
failed, the recovery vehicle was designed to float long enough
for a water recovery by helicopter launched from a surface ship.
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While the vehicle was still in the construction stage, tests
were conducted of the air recovery technique?with disheartening
results. Of 74 drops using personnel-type chutes, only 49 were
recovered. Using one type of operational drop chute, only four
were recovered out of 15 dropped, and an average of 1.5 aircraft
passes were required for the hook-up. Eleven drops of another type
of operational chute resulted in five recoveries and an average
of two aircraft passes for the snatch. Fart of the difficulty
lay in weak chutes and rigging and in crew inexperience; however,
the most serious problem was the fast drop rate of the chutes.
Parachutes that were available to support the planned weight of
the recovery vehicle had a sink rate of about 33 feet per second.
What was required was a sink rate approaching 20 feet per second
so that the aircraft would have time to make three or four passes
if necessary for hook-up. Fortunately, by the time space hardware
was ready for launching, a parachute had been developed with a
sink rate slow enough to offer a reasonable chance of air recovery..
The launch facilities at Vandenberg AFB were complete, and
the remote tracking and control facilities were ready for the first
flight test of a THOR-AGENA combination in January 1959. The
count-down was started for a launch on the 21st; however, the
attempt aborted at launch minus 60 minutes. When power was applied
to test the AGENA hydraulic system, certain events took place that
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were supposed to occur in flight but not while the vehicle was still
sitting on the launch pad. The explosive bolts connecting the AGENA
to the THOR detonated, and the ullage rockets fired. (Ullage rockets
are small solid propellant rockets attached to the AGENA. These
rockets are fired just prior to ignition of the AGENA engine after
its separation from the THOR to insure that the liquid AGENA propellants
are pushed against the bottom of the tanks so that proper flow into
the pumps will occur.) The AGENA settled into the fairing attaching
jt,-to the THOR and did not fall to the ground, but appreciable
damage was done.
A program review conference was held in Palo Alto two days
after the launch failure to examine the possible causes of the
abort and to assess its impact on the planned CORONA launch
schedule. Fortunately, the problem was quickly identified and
easily corrected, and it was felt that the system was ready for
resumption of test launches at the rate of about one per month.
General Electric surfaced a new problem with the re-entry
vehicle at the review conference having to do with the stability
of the nose cone during re-entry. The cone was designed for a
film load of 4o pounds, but the first missions would be able to
carry only 20 pounds. GE reported that about three pounds of
ballast would have to be carried in the forward end of the cone
to restore stability. The program officers decided to add an
instrument package as ballast, either for diagnostic purposes or
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for support of the biomedical cover story, thus converting what
could have been dead weight into a net plus for the test program.
The test plan contemplated arriving at full operational
capability at a relatively early date through sequential testing
of the major components of the system--beginning with the THOR-
AGENA combination alone, then adding the nose cone to test the
ejection/re-entry/recovery sequence, and finally installing a
camera for a full CORONA systems test. Just how much confidence
the project planners had in the imminence of success cannot now be
discovered; however, if the confidence factor was very high at the
start, it must soon-have begun to wane. Beginning in February 1959
and extending through June 1960 an even dozen launches were
attempted, with eight of the vehicles carrying cameras, and all
of them were failures; no film capsules were recovered from orbit.
Of the eight camera-carrying vehicles, four failed to achieve orbit.
Of the four vehicles that went into orbit, three experienced camera,
or film failures, and the fourth was not recovered because of a
malfunction of the re-entry body spin rockets. These summaries of
the initial launch attempts illustrate the nature and dimensions
of the problems for which solutions had to be found.
DISCOVERER I
The on-pad failure of 21 January was not assigned a number in
the DISCOVERER series. DISCOVERER I was launched on 28 February
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1959 with a light engineering payload as a test of THOR-AGENA
performance. No recovery was planned. For a time there was uncertainty
as to what had happened to it, because no radio signals were received.
It was later established as being in orbit on the basis of radar
skin-track. The speculation was that the protective nose cone
over the antennas was ejected just before the AGENA fired and that
the AGENA then rammed into the nose cone, damaging the antennas.
DISCOVERER II
The second vehicle was launched on 13 April 1959. Orbit was
officially announced about two hours later, along with a statement
that the capsule carried a light-weight biomedical payload (as
indeed it did). The Air Force reported on 15 April that plans to
recover the capsule near Hawaii had been abandoned and that the '
capsule might descend somewhere in the Arctic. The announcement
slightly understated the known facts. The capsule had ejected on
the 17th orbit as planned, but a timing malfunction (actually a
human programming error) had caused the ejection sequence to be
initiated too early. The capsule was down, probably somewhere in
the near-vicinity of the Spitsbergen Islands north of Norway.
In fact, there were later reports that the falling capsule had
actually been seen by Spitsbergen residents. The Air Force announced
on the 16th that the Norwegian government had authorized a search
for the capsule, which would begin the following day. Planes
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scoured the area, and helicopters joined the search on the 20th.
Nothing was found, however, and the search was abandoned on the
23rd.
The incident later became the subject of a book by Alistair
MacLean, Ice Station Zebra, and of a 1968 movie of the same name.
The fictionalized version departed rather substantially from the
facts: a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine is headed for the North
-Pole to rescue a team of British weather scientists marooned on an
ice floe that is breaking up. On board is a team of special agents
on assignment to locate and bring back a capsule containing high-
-resolution photographs of all missile sites in the U.S., which had
been taken from a Russian satellite equipped with a new type of
camera that had been stolen from the U.S. by the Russians. Meanwhile,
a Russian force is also on its way to try to retrieve the capsule.
It's an exciting movie, although it is plain that no one who has
left the CORONA program wound up as a technical consultant to MGM.
DISCOVERER III
Much publicity attended the launching of DISCOVERER III:
some of it planned and some unplanned (and unwanted). This was
the first (and only) DISCOVERER flight to carry animals: four live
black mice. Black mice were chosen in order to ascertain the
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possible hair-bleaching effects of cosmic rays. The mice were
members of the C-57 strain, a particularly rugged breed. They
had been "trained," along with 60 other mice, at the Air Farce's
Aeromedical Field Laboratory at Holloman AFB. They were seven to
ten weeks old and weighed slightly over an ounce apiece. A three-
day food supply was provided, which consisted of a special formula
containing peanuts, oatmeal, gelatin, orange juice, and water. Each
mouse was placed in a small individual cage about twice its size,
and each had a minuscule radio strapped to its back to monitor the
effects of the space trip on heart action, respiration, and
muscular activity.
The lift-off on 3 June 1959 was uneventful, but, instead of
injecting approximately horizontally, the AGENA apparently injected
downward, driving the vehicle into the Pacific Ocean and killing
the mice. Looking back on the mission, the attempt to orbit the
mice seems to have been jinxed from the very beginning.
Just before the first try at launch, telemetry indicated a
lack of mouse activity. It was thought at first that the little
fellows were merely asleep; so, a technician was sent up in a
cherry-picker to arouse them. He banged on the side of the vehicle
and tried catcalls, but to no avail. When the capsule was opened,
the mice were found to be dead. The cages had been sprayed with krylon
to cover rough edges; the mice had found it tastier than their formula;
and that was that.
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The second try at launch several days later with a back-up
mouse "crew" was also a near-abort when the capsule life cell
humidity sensor suddenly indicated 100 percent relative humidity.
The panic button was pushed, and trouble-shooters were sent up to
check. They found that when the vehicle was in a vertical position
the humidity sensor was directly beneath the cages, and it did not
distinguish between plain water and urine. The wetness dried out
after awhile, all was forgiven, and the vehicle was launched--
unhappily into the permanent 100 percent moisture environment of
the Pacific Ocean.
Also, the timing of the launch was unfortunate. The monkeys,
Able and Baker, had survived a 300-mile flight in a JUPELEE nose cone
on 29 May in connection with another, unrelated test 'program.
However, Able died during minor surgery on 3 June to remove an
electrode that had been implanted under his skin. (This was the date
of the DISCOVERER III launch.) The British Society Against Cruel
Sports made a formal protest to the U.S. Ambassador, and the press
'raised quite a stink about the fatal mice flight--comparing it
unfavorably with the Russians successful launching of the dog,
Laika, in SPUTNIK II back in November 1957 and demanding that
orbit and recovery procedures be perfected before attempting
future launches of mice or monkeys.
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DISCOVERER IV
This flight, which was launched on 25 June 1959, was the first
to carry a camera and was thus the first true CORONA mission attempt.
The payload did not go into orbit, because the AGENA failed to
reach the required velocity. The original cover plan had called
for launches three and four to carry mice, but, because of the furore
raised over the death of the mice on DISCOVERER III, this one was
not "miced." Certain of the official records refer to the mission
as having carried mechanical mice (vibrators to simulate mouse
activity), but this turns out to have been something that was talked
about but never actually tried.
There was one amusing experiment o1 an early flight) and it
may have been on DISCOVERER IV. A means was needed for concealing
the payload doors from inquisitive eyes while the vehicle was on
the launch pad. The scheme that was devised was to cover the doors
with fairings made of sheets of paper under which were strung two
lengths of piano wire with ping-pong balls attached to the forward
ends of the wires. The thought was that, as the vehicle accelerated
during launch, the air flow along the vehicle skin would blow the
ping-pong balls to the rear, thus tearing off the paper and exposing
the payload doors. The strip-away fairing was tested by attaching
it to the side of a sports car and driving the car at high speed along
the Bayshore Freeway late one evening. ,The test proved two things:
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that the fairing would tear off as intended and that the Freeway
patrolmen could easily overtake a vehicle traveling at 90 miles per
hour. Since the test indicated a "go" situation, at two a.m. on a
foggy, chilly morning--under a blaze of floodlights--a few cents worth
of paper, piano wire, and ping-pong balls were affixed to a multi-
million dollar space vehicle. However, perhaps because test
conditions rarely perfectly simulate operational conditions, the
paper did not strip away during lift off, and no one was anxious
to retest the scheme by chancing another go at the Bayshore Freeway.
DISCOVERER V
DISCOVERER V was launched on 13 August 1959 and attained orbit
with a camera payload. The temperature within the spacecraft was
lower than planned, and the camera failed on the first orbit. The
recovery capsule was ejected at the proper time but for reasons
then unknown did not show up in the recovery zone. Early in 1960
an unidentified object was discovered in space in a near-polar orbit.
It was finally determined to be the recovery capsule of DISCOVERER V.'
Instead of deboosting it into a. descent trajectory, the retro-rocket
had accelerated it into a higher orbit with an apogee of 1,058
miles.
DISCOVERER VI
The sixth launch was on 19 August 1959. The vehicle achieved orbit,
but the camera failed on the second revolution, and'the retro-rocket
malfunctioned on the recovery attempt.
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DISCOVERER VII
The next launch was on 7 November 1959. The AGENA failed to
go into orbit.
DISCOVERER VIII
The vehicle was successfully launched on 20 November 1959,
but the AGENA inserted into an eccentric orbit with an apogee of
913 miles. The camera also failed again.' The satellite recovery
vehicle was ejected successfully, but the parachute failed to open.
* * * * *
It had become plain by the end of November 1959 that something
(or, to be more precise, many things) had to be done to correct the
multiple failures that were plaguing the CORONA system. Eight
THOR-AGENA combinations and five cameras had been expended with
nothing to show for the effort 'except accumulated knowledge of the
system's weaknesses. The project technicians knew what was going
wrong but not always why. Through DISCOVERER VIII, the system
had experienced these major failures:
One misfired on the launch pad.
Three failed to achieve orbit.
Two went into highly eccentric orbits.
One capsule ejected prematurely.
Two cameras operated briefly and then failed.
One camera failed entirely.
One experienced a retro-rocket malfunction.
One had very low spacecraft temperature.
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A panel of consultants reviewed the various failures and their
probable causes and concluded that what was needed most was
"qualification, requalification, and multiple testing of
component parts" before assembling them and sending them aloft.
This called for more money. Accordingly, Bissell submitted a
project amendment to the DDCI on 22 January 1960 asking approval
of nearly
additional to cover the costs of the testing
Cabell for submitting a request
already under way: "Although
program. He apologized to General
for funds to pay for work that was
such a sequence is regrettable, there has been considerable confusion
in this program as to what the amount of the overruns would be
and this has made it difficult to obtain approvals in an orderly
fashion in advance."
As of the fall of 1959, major problems remained to be solved
in achieving an acceptable orbit, in camera functioning, and in
?
recovering the film capsule. These were the more serious of the
specific failures that were occupying the attention of the
technicians:
The AGENA vehicle was designed for use with both the
THOR and the AIIAS boosters. The ascent technique used by the
AGENA vehicle was essentially the same in both combinations,
but there were significant differences in the method of
employing the booster. In the CORM program, in order to
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conserve weight, the THOR booster followed a programmed trajectory
using only its autopilot. Also, the THOR thrust was not cut
off by command at a predetermined velocity (as in the ATLAS);
instead, its fuel burned to near-exhaustion. This relatively
inaccurate boosting profile, coupled with the low altitude of
CORONA orbits, imposed severe orbital injection constraints.
At a typical injection altitude of 120 miles, an angular error
of plus or minus 1.1 degrees or a velocity deficit of as little
as 100 feet per second would result in failure to complete the
first orbit. This had happened repeatedly. Lasting relief
from this problem lay some distance in the future: a more
powerful AGENA was being developed, and the weight of instrumenta-
tion for measuring in-flight performance on the early flights
would be reduced on later operational missions. The short-term
remedy lay in a drastic weight-reduction program. This was
carried out in part (literally, it is said) by attacking
surplus metal with tin snips and files.
The system was designed to operate without pressurization
(again to conserve weight), and the acetate base film being
used was tearing or breaking in the high vacuum existing in
space and causing the camera to jam. A solution for this problem
was found in substituting polyester for acetatebase film.
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The equipment was built to work best at an even and
predetermined temperature. To save weight, only passive
thermal control was provided. The spacecraft's internal
temperature had varied on the flights thus far, and it was
much lower than desired on one flight. An interim solution
for this problem was found in varying the thermal painting
of the vehicle skin. (Interestingly, after the system finally
got into full operation, it was found that the equipment
worked noticeably better when the vehicle was running hotter
than the supposedly optimum temperature.)
The spin-despin rockets used to stabilize the recovery
vehicle during re-entry had a tendency to explode rather than
merely to fire. Several had blown up in ground tests. A
solution was found in substituting cold gas spin and despin
rockets.
One of the most intractable problems, which was to persist
for many months, was that of placing the satellite recovery .
vehicle (SRV) into a descent trajectory that would terminate
in the recovery zone. This required ejecting the SRV from the
AGENA at precisely the right time and decelerating it by
retro-rocket firing to the correct velocity and at a suitable
angle. There was very little margin for error in this phase:
one second of error iniejection timing represented five miles
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displacement of the recovery point; a retro-velocity vector
error of more than ten degrees would cause the capsule to
miss the recovery zone completely.
One might ask why the CORONA program officers persisted
in the face of such adversity. The answer lay in the over-
whelming intelligence needs of the period. The initial planning
of CORONA began at a time when we did not know how many BEAR and
BISON aircraft the Soviets had, whether they were introducing a
new and far. more advanced long range bomber than the BISON, or
whether they had largely skipped the build-up of a manned bomber
force in favor of missiles. There had been major changes in
intelligence estimates of Soviet nuclear capabilities and of the
scope of the Soviet missile program on the basis of the results
of the relatively small number of U-2 missions approved for the
summer of 1957. However, by 1959, the great "missile gap"
controversy was very much in the fore. The Soviets had tested
ICBM's at ranges of 5,000 miles, proving they had the capability of
building and operating them. What was not known was where they
were deploying them operationally and in what numbers. The U-2
had improved our knowledge considerably, but it could not provide
the answers to the critical questions, and it was increasingly
becoming less an intelligence asset than a political liability.
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It was judged to be only a matter of time until one was shot
down?with the program coming-to an end as an almost certain
consequence.
DISCOVERER IX
A standdown was in effect from 20 November 1959 until
14- February 1960 to allow time for intensive R&D efforts to
identify and eliminate the causes of failure. DISCOVERER IX
was launched on 4 February and failed to achieve orbit.
:DISCOVERER X
The first recovery of film from a CORONA vehicle occurred with
the launching of DISCOVERER X on 19 February 1960, but in a manner
such that no one boasted of it as being a "first." The THOR
booster rocket began to fishtail not long after it left the launch
pad and was destroyed by the range safety officer at 52 seconds after
lift-off. The payload came down about a mile from Pad 5 and was
:located by helicopter, which put down a team to disarm the
pyrotechnics and guard the payload until it could be picked up.
The recovery was made by a crew that rode to the scene by Jeep.
DISCOVERER XI
DISCOVERERs VII through X carried only a quarter of a load of
film (10 pounds) to permit the carrying of additional
Instrumentation for testing vehicle performance. DISCOVERER XI
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was launched on 15 April 1960 carrying a camera and 16 pounds of
film. A reasonably good orbit was achieved (380 miles at apogee
and 109.5 miles at perigee), and the camera operated satisfactorily.
All of the film was exposed and transferred into the recovery
capsule. Unfortunately, the problem of the exploding spin rockets,
which had been observed in ground tests, occurred during the
recovery sequence, and the payload was lost. It might be noted
that this was the first mission on which the camera operated
successfully throughout the mission, primarily because of the
change from acetate base to polyester base film:
DISCOVERER XII
Another standdown was imposed following the failure of
DISCOVERER XI. As of mid-April 1960, there had been 11 launches
and one abort on pad. Seven of the launches achieved orbit, but no.
capsules had been recovered. DISCOVERER XII was planned as a
diagnostic flight--without camera payload--heavily instrumented
to determine precisely why recovery of capsules had failed
previously. The vehicle was launched on 29 June 1960, but the
AGENA failed to go into orbit.
.DISCOVERER XIII I.
The next flight, on 10 August 1960, was launched as a repeat of
the no-orbit DISCOVERER XII diagnostic flight, without camera and film.
The vehicle was launched and successfully inserted into orbit. The
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recovery package was ejected on the 17th orbit, And retro-firing and
descent were .normal - -except that the capsule came down well away from
the planned impact point. The nominal impact area was approximately
250 miles south of Honolulu where C-119 and C-130 aircraft circled
c\11
awaiting the capsule's descent. The splash-down occurred about 330
miles northwest of Hawaii. The airplanes were backed up by surface
ships deployed in a recovery zone with a north-south axis of some
1.:11
250 miles and an east-west axis extending about 550 miles to either
side of the expected impact point. Although beyond the range of
the airborne recovery aircraft, the DISCOVERER XIII capsule descended
near enough to the staked-out zone to permit an attempt at water )11)
recovery. A ship reached the scene before the capsule sank and
,
fished it out of the ocean. Much of the credit for the success t0
was attributed to the inauguration (on the unsuccessful DISCOVERER'
XII launch) of the cold gas spin and despin rocket system.
For the first time ever, man had orbited an object in space
and recovered it according tO plan. This American space "first"
4V
beat the Russians by just nine days. The Soviets had tried to
recover SPUTNIK IV the previous May but failed when the recovery
capsule ejected into a higher orbit. They aid succeed in de-orbiting
01,fi
and recovering SPUTNIK V carrying the dogs, Be1ka and Strelka,
on 20 August 1960. S(114
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Arrangements were made for extensive publicity concerning
this success in recovering an object from orbit--in large measure.
to support the cover story of DISCOVERER/CORONA as being an +11
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experimental space series. News photos were released of the lift-
off from Vandenberg, of the capsule floating in the ocean, and of.
the recovery ship, Haiti Victory. President Eisenhower displayed
the capsule to the press, and it was later placed on exhibit in
the Smithsonian Institution for public viewing. (There is some
1
reason for suspecting that the capsule displayed by the President
and exhibited at the Smithsonian could have been a ringer. There is
an Obscurely worded reference in the project files to the building'
? [
of externally identical crates and to the witching of the crates.
It may be conjectured--and it is only conjecture--that it was planned
to substitute an unused capsule for the one that was recovered. The
plan--if there was indeed one--may 'not actually have been carried out,
and whether it was or was not is perhaps of little importance a
decade after the fact.)
We have all watched television coverage of the U.S. man-in-
space programs with the recovery of astronauts and capsules after
splash-down in the ocean. A helicopter flies from the recovery
ship to the floating capsule and drops swimmers to attach a line
to the capsule. .Alter the astronauts are removed, the helicopter
hoists the capsule from the water and carries it to the recovery
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ship. What most of us don't realize is that the recovery technique
was developed for and perfected by the CORONA program as a back-up
in event of failure of the air catch.
DISCOVERER XIV
Success!!! DISCOVERER XIV was launched on 18 August 1960,
one week after the successful water recovery of the DISCOVERER XIII
capsule. The vehicle carried a camera and a 20-pound load of
film. The camera operated satisfactorily, and the full load of
film was exposed and transferred to the recovery capsule. The
AGENA did not initially position itself in orbit so as to permit the
recovery sequence to occur. It was on the verge of tumbling during .
the first few orbits, and an excessive quantity of gas had to be
used in correcting the situation. Fortunately, vehicle attitude
became stabilized about midway through the scheduled flight period,
thus relieving the earlier fear that recovery would be impossible.
The satellite recovery vehicle was ejected on the 17th pass, and the
,
film capsule was recovered by air snatch.
The film was flown to the
for development and was then delivered to
PIC (now known as AIRLC) for readout and reporting. Although of
substantially lower resolution than that obtainable from the U-2,
the photography was of intelligence value) covered areas of the.
Soviet Union. that had not been reached by the 11-2, and this One
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satellite mission yielded more photographic area coverage than the
total of all U-2 missions that had been flown over the Soviet
Union. Aside from the expected lower resolution, the only major
deficiencies in the photography were plus and minus density bars
(pressure streaks) running diagonally across the format.
A press release announced the success of the mission but
naturally made no mention of the real success: the delivery of
photographic intelligence. The announcement noted that the satellite
had been placed into an orbit with a 77.6 degree inclination, an
apogee of 502 miles, a perigee of 116 miles, and an orbital period
of 94.5 minutes. A retro-rocket had slowed the capsule to re-entry,
velocity, and a parachute had been released at 60,000 feet. The
capsule, which weighed 84 pounds at recovery, was caught at 8,500
feet by a C-119 airplane on its third pass over the falling
parachute.
The program officers did not take the success of DISCOVERER
\\s?
XIV to mean that their problems with the system were at an end,
even though many of the earlier difficulties had been surmounted.
The orbital injection technique had improved to a point such that
vehicles were repeatedly put into orbit with injection angle errors
of less than four-tenths of a degree. The timing of the initiation
of the recovery sequence had been so refined that 'ejection of the
DISCOVERER XI SRV occurred within five seconds of the planned time.
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Parachute deceleration and air catch of the capsule had been
accomplished repeatedly with capsules dropped from high-altitude
balloons. The last two cameras placed in orbit had operated well.
However, there were other critical problems that remained to be
solved. Foremost among them at the time was that of consistently
achieving the correct retro-velocity and angle of re-entry of the
recovery vehicle. The DISCOVERER XIV capsule was the only one
thus far that had descended in the designated impact zone. This
was a problem that was to receive major attention during the
next few weeks.
Four more cameras were launched within the next four months
with one success and three failures. DISCOVERER XV was sent aloft
on 13 September. The vehicle was successfully inserted into orbit,
and the camera functioned properly. However, the recovery vehicle
re-entered at the wrong pitch attitude, causing the capsule to
come down outside the recovery zone and demonstrating that the
technicians' concern over the retro-firing seqpence was well founded."
The capsule was located, but it sank before a recovery ship could
reach it. DISCOVERER XVI was launched on 26 October, but the AGENA
failed to go into orbit because of a malfunction of a timing device.
The first ten camera-equipped vehicles carried what was known
as the C camera: a single, vertical-looking, reciprocating,
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panoramic camera that exposed the film by scanning at a right angle
to the line of flight. DISCOVEREE XVI carried the first of a new
series of cameras known as the C Prime (C'). The C' differed only
slightly from the original C configuration and was essentially
little more than a follow-on -2=cu-renent of the C camera.
The DISCOVERER XVII mission was launched on 12 November and
went the full route through successful air catch--except for one
,mishap: the film broke after 1.7 feet of the leader had fed
through the camera. There is an inconsistency in the available
records on this and the succeeding mission. The press release
concerning this mission announced that the AGENA B, a more powerful
second-stage engine, was used for the first time; the project files
record the first use of the B vehicle on the following mission.
There is support for the accuracy of the press release in the fact
that this was the first flight to carry a full 39-pound film load
permitting the first of the two-day missions. The capsule was
-recovered on the 31st orbit.
Success again! DISCOVERER XVIII was launched on 10 December
1960 carrying 39 pounds of film. Orbit was achieved, and the camera
worked well, exposing the entire film load. The recovery vehicle was
? ejected on revolution number 48 after three days in orbit, and the
capsule was retrieved by air snatch. This was the first successful
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mission employing the C' camera and the AGENA B second stage.
There was fogging on the first, second, and last frame of each
photo pass, but image quality was otherwise as good as the best
from DISCOVERER XIV.
Of the next ten launches, extending from December 1960 through
3 August 1961, only four were CORONA missions. DISCOVERERs XIX and
XXI carried radiometric payloads in support of the CORONA cover
story, and they were not intended to be recovered. DISCOVERER XXI
included an experiment that was to be of major significance in the
later development of CORONA and other space programs: the AGENA.
engine was successfully restarted in space. .
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DISCOVERER XX was the first of a dozen launches extending
over a period of three years carrying mapping cameras, which the
4 President had approved for inclusion within the CORONA project.
The purpose of the mapping program, which was known as ARGON,.
was to obtain precise geodetic fixes and an extension of existing
datum planes within the Soviet Union. ARGON accomplished
substantially less than its intended goal, in pa.ge part because ,
of the limitations imposed by the very short focal length of the
mapping camera.
DISCOVERER XX was itself a bust on a number of counts:
the camera failed; there were no shutter firings; and the
orbital programmer malfunctioned. This last-named failuxe led
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to an important change in control procedures for CORONA. On
this and all prior flights the recovery sequence was initiated
automatically by an ejection command cut into the program tape.
The program timer failed temporarily on orbit 31 of this mission.
causing the entire sequence to be about one-half cycle out of
phase. The automatic initiation of the recovery sequence was
eliminated from the program tape on subsequent missions..
Thereafter, the positive issuance of an ejection command was
required.
?
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Of the four CORONA missions attempted between December 1960
and August 1961, two did not go into orbit as a consequence of 6)'
AGENA failures, and two were qualified successes. DISCOVERER XXV
was launched on 16 June and exposed its full load of film. The air .
catch failed, but the back-up water recovery was successful. The 0
camera failed on revolution 22 of DISCOVERER XXVII.whiCh was t
launched on 7 July, but about three-quarters of the film was A
\ .
4
exposed .and was recovered by air catch. \ \
1
Going into August 1961, a total of 17 camera-carrying CORONA
missions had been attempted, and usable photography had been
recovered from four of them. An appreciation of the capacity of the
CORONA camera to photograph large areas of the earth's surface
can be gotten from the fact that just four successful missions had'
yielded plottable coverage of. some 13 million square miles,
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representing nearly one-half of the total area of interest.
Part of this coverage was redundant as a consequence of multiple
photographic passes over the same target areas and would become
increasingly so as long as mission life remained at two days.
The first substantial upi;radins of the CORONA camera system
came with the introduction in August 1961 of the C Triple Prime
(CT") camera. The original C camera was a scanning panoramic
camera in which the camera cycling rate and the velocity-over-
height ratio were constant and were selected before launching.
Image motion compensation was fixed mechanically to the velocity-
over-height ratio. A brief explanation of these terms may be
helpful in understanding the nature of the problems with which
the _camera designers had to cope.
A means must be provided for matching the number of film
exposures in a given period of time (camera cycling rate)
with the varying ratio between vehicle altitude and velocity
on orbit (velocity-over-height) so that the ground area is
photographed in a series of swaths with neither gaps nor
excessive overlapping in the coverage.
If the subject moves just as a snapshot is taken with a
hand-held camera, and if the camera shutter speed is not fast
enough to "stop" the motion, the photographic image will be
smeared. To a camera peering down from an orbiting CORONA
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space vehicle, the earth's surface appears to be passing
beneath the camera at a speed of roughly five miles per
second. A camera photographing the earth's surface from a
satellite moving at that speed would yield smeared photography
if some means were not Provided for stopping the relative
motion. The technique used in accomplishing this is known
as image motion compensation.
The C'" was also a reciprocating camera with a rotating lens cell,
which exposed the film during a segment of its rotation. The new
camera had a larger aperture lens, an improved film transport
mechanism, and a greater flexibility in command of camera and vehicle
operations--especially as regards control of the velocity-over-
height factor. The larger aperture lens permitted use of slower
film emulsions, which, combined with the improved resolving power
of the lens itself, offered the prospect of yielding photography
with a ground resolution approximately twice as good as with the
C and C' cameras.
The first C'" camera system with a 39-pound film load was
launched on 30 August 1961. The mission was a success, with the
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full film load being transferred and with ejection and recovery
occurring on the 32nd revolution. However, all frames of the
photography were out of focus. The cause was identified and was
corrected by redesigning the scan head. Seven more missions were
launched during the last four months of 19610 three with the C'
camera and four with the C'". Six of them attained orbit, and
the cameras operated satisfactorily on all six. Film was recovered
from four of the missions. The
a C"' camera system, was rated
had a cover assignment to carry
satellite, dubbed OSCAR, into a
last of the four, which carried
the best mission to date. It also
out: the injection of a secondary
separate orbit. OSCAR was a small,
radio satellite broadcasting a signal on 145 megacycles for pick
up by amateurs as an aid in the study of radio propagation
phenomena.
Slowly but surely the bugs were being worked out, but it seemed
that just as one was laid to rest another arose to take its place.
Perhaps what was actually happening was that various sets of
problems existed simultaneously, but the importance of some of them
was masked by others. The elimination of a particular problem
made it possible to recognize the significance of another. The
recent successes had resulted largely ,from correcting weaknesses in
the payload portion of the system. .A.t,the same time, difficulties
in the AGENA vehicle began to surface. Of the last seven missions
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In 1961, four experienced on-orbit difficulties, with the AGENA
power supply or control gas system.
Power system components for general use in satellite systems
1,1
were designed, developed, and tested in the CORONA program.
'*
Foremost among those components were the static electronic 1)1
1g
inverters used to convert direct current battery energy into
the various alternating current voltages required by the other \ to
'4 subsystems. Static inverters, which were first flown aboard
If'
CORONA vehicles, were considered essential, because they had
'L
8 '
1) ''
half the weight and double the efficiency of their rotary counter- N
parts. Unfortunately, they are rather temperamental gadgets. The /
Illi
history of inverter development had been marked by high failure
i?1
rates in system checkouts on the ground. Despite the lessons that V
had been learned and the improvements in circuit design that
resulted from them, the recent on-orbit power failures demonstrated
a need for further research and development.
0
The AGENA failed on DISCOVERER XXXVII, launched on 13 January \
t'
1962, and the payload did not go into orbit. It was the last
mission to carry the C"' camera system, and with it the DISCOVERER
series came to an end. After 37 launches or launch attempts, the
cover story for DISCOVERER had simply worn out. With the improved
record of success and the near-certainty of an even better record
in the future it seemed likely that thererwouldbe as many as a
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dozen and a half to two dozen launches per year for perhaps years
to come.
The 1961 R&D effort was not confined to improving the
performance of the existing system. A major development program
was concurrently under way on a much better camera subsystem.
A contract was awarded on 9 August 1961, retroactively effective
to 20 March, for a new camera configuration to be known as MURAL.
The MURAL camera system consisted essentially of two C"' cameras
mounted with one pointing slightly forward and the other slightly
backward. Two 40-pound rolls of film were carried in a double-
spool film supply Cassette. The two film webs were fed separately
to the two cameras where they were panoramically exposed during
segments of the lens cells' rotations and then were fed to a double-
spool take-up cassette in the satellite recovery vehicle. The
system was designed for a mission duration of up to four days.
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The vertical-looking C, C', and C'" cameras had photographed
the target area by sweeping across it in successive overlapping
swaths. The MURAL concept involved photographing each swath area
twice. The forward-looking camera first photographed the swath at
an angle 15 degrees from the vertical. About a half-dozen frames
later, the backward-looking camera photographed the same swath at
an angle also 15 degrees from the vertical. When the two resulting
photographs of the same area or object were properly aligned in a
stereo-microscope, the photography would appear to be three-
dimensional. Simultaneous operation of both instruments was
required for stereo photography. If either camera failed,
photography could still be obtained from the other, but it could
be viewed in only two dimensions.
The first MURAL camera system was launched as program flight
number 38 on 27 February 1962. The twenty-sixth, and last in the
series, was launched on 21 December 1963. Twenty of the SRV's were
recovered, 19 of them by air snatch. The one water recovery was
of a capsule that splashed down a thousand miles from the nominal
impact point. Of the six vehicles that failed, two malfunctioned
in the launch sequence, one SRV failed to eject properly, and three
capsules came down in the ocean and sank before they could be
recovered Twenty successes out of 26 tries was a remarkable record
when viewed against the difficulties experienced only two years earlier.
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The three capsules that sank came down in or near the recovery
zone, indicating that the problems previously encountered in the re-
entry sequence had been solved. They were not supposed to sink so
quickly, however. (One of them floated for less than three minutes.)
To minimize the ,chance of a capsule being retrieved by persons other
than the American recovery crew, the capsules were designed to float
for a period ranging originally from one to three days and then to
sink. The duration of the flotation period was controlled by a capsule
sink valve containing compressed salt, which would dissolve in sea
water at a rate that could be predicted within rather broad limits.
.When the salt plug had dissolved, water entered the capsule, and IA
sank--ingenious but simple.
Project personnel give an amusing account of the testing of
the rate at which the sink valve salt plug would dissolve. They
found an old four-legged tub and set it up in the test facility.
The tub was filled with sea water to make sure that the tests would,
exactly match the conditions existing at splash down. The tub was
large, and filling it required making repeated trips to Half Moon Bay
with a 50-gallon drum in the back of a.pick-up truck. At first,
.the drum was filled from an old wooden dock extending into the bay$
but the owner caught them filling the drum one day and chased them
off. He seemed less concerned over the use of his dock than
with the wholesale pilfering of ."his"i. sea water. Thereafter, the
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salt water acquisition crew had tosdescend to the bay on foot along
a steep and twisting natural path leading down the cliff. Carrying a
full drum weighing something over 400 pounds back up the path was
not an easy task. The ascents were made without incident, but on one
descent the barrel-carrier stumbled and pitched headlong into the
bay. He is cited by project personnel as being a man who really
threw himself into his work.
Other significant improvements in the CORONA program were
inaugurated during the lifetime of the MURAL system. One of them
was an aid to photo-interpretation. In order to read out the
photography, there are certain collateral facts that the photo- ,
interpreter must be told or be able to determine about each frame
of the photography. He must be able to ascertain the portion of the
earthts surface that is imaged, the scale of the photography, and
its geometry. In simplest terms, he must know where the vehicle was
and how it was oriented in space at the precise time the picture
was taken. Until 1962 the ground area covered by a particular
frame of photography was identified by combining data provided on
the orbital path of the vehicle with :ibe time of camera firing.
The orientation or attitude of-the vehicle on orbit was determined
from horizon photographs recorded at each end of every other frame.
from a pair of horizon cameras that were included ia the CORONA
I
camera system.
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Beginning with the first of the MURAL flights, an index camera
was incorporated into the photographic system, and a stellar camera
was added a few missions later. The short focal length index camera
took a small scale photograph of the area being covered on a much
larger scale by successive sweeps of the pan cameras. The small scale
photograph, used in conjunction with orbital data, simplified the
problem of matching the pan photographs with the terrain. Photographs
taken of stars by the stellar camera, in combination with those taken
of the horizons by the horizon cameras, provided a more precise means
of determining vehicle attitude on orbit.
The photography from program flight number 47, a MURAL
mission launched on 27 July 1962, was marred by heavy corona and.
.radiation fogging. The corona problem was a persistent one--
disappearing for a time only to reappear later--and had become
even more severe with the advent of the complicated film transport
mechanisms of the MURAL camera. Corona marking was caused by
sparking of static electricity from moving parts of the system,
especially from the film rollers. The problem was eventually solved
by modifications of the parts themselves and by rigid qualification
testing of them.
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The boosting capacity of the first-stage THOR was substantially
increased in early 1963 by strapping to the THOR a cluster of small.
solid-propellant rockets, which were jettisoned after firing. This
Thrust Augmented THOR, or TAT as it came to be known, was first used
for the launching of the heavier LANYARD camera system. LANYARD was
developed within the CORONA program as a modification of one of ,
the cameras designed for the SAMOS system and, with its longer focal
length, was expected to yield better resolution than the CORONA
cameras. It had a single lens cell capable of stereoscopic coverage
by swinging a mirror through a 30-degree angle. Three flights were
attempted, only one of which was partially successful. The camera
had a serious lens defect, which was later identified and corrected:
The LANYARD program was initiated as an interim system pending
the completion of a high-resolution spotting system then under
development. It was cancelled upon the success of the spotting
system. The TAT booster itself was a signal success, permitting
the later launching of heavier, more versatile CORONA systems.
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Program flight number 69, launched on 24 August 1963, introduced
the first two-bucket configuration--the next major upgrading of the
CORONA system. (The film recovery capsule is commonly referred to
as a bucket, although it more nearly resembled a round-bottomed
kettle.) The new modification, which was known as the J-1 system,
retained the MURAL stereoscopic camera concept but added a second
film capsule and recovery vehicle. With two SRV's in the system,
film capacity was increased to 160 pounds (versus the 20-pound
capacity of the first few CORONA missions). The two-bucket system.
was designed to be deactivated or stored on orbit in a passive
(zombie) mode for up to 21 days. This permitted the recovery of
the first bucket after half of the film supply was exposed. The
1
second bucket could begin filling immediately thereafter, or its
start could be delayed for a few days. A major redesign of the
command and control mechanisms was required to accommodate the
more complicated mission profile of the two-bucket system.
As with each of the major modifications of CORONA, the 3-1
program had a few early bugs. On the first mission, the shutter
on the master horizon camera remained open about 1,000 times
seriously fogging the adjacent pan photography, and the AGENA
.current inverter failed in mid-flight making it impossible to
recover the second bucket. Also, the J-1 system initially experienced
a rather severe heatproblem, which was solved by reducing the thermal
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sensitivity of the camera and by better control of vehicle skin
temperature through shielding and varying the paint pattern.
Back in 1960 and 1961, the successful recovery of a CORONA
film bucket was an "event." A mere two years later with the advent'
of the J-1 system, success had become routine, and a failure was an
"event." By the end of 19660 37 J-1 systems had been launched; 35
of them were. put into orbit; and 64 buckets of film were recovered.
There were no failures at recovery in the three years following.
1966: 28 buckets were launched, and 28 buckets were recovered.
Also, mission duration was greatly expanded during the lifetime
of the J-1 system. A mission in June 1964 yielded four full days
over target on each of the two buckets. Five full days of
operation on each bucket was attained in January 1965. In April
1966, the first bucket was recovered after seven days on orbit. A
13-day mission life was achieved in August 1966, and this was
increased to 15 days in June 1967.
The increased mission life and excellent record of recovery
resulted from a number of successive improvements that were
incorporated into the J-1 program. Among them was a subsystem
known as LIFEBOAT, a completely redundant and self-contained
apparatus built into the AGENA'that could be activated for
recovering the SRV in. event of an AGENA power failure (which
still happened occasionally). Another improvements was the
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introduction of the new and more powerful THORAD booster. A third was
the addition of a rocket orbit-adjust system. The CORM vehicles
were necessarily flown with a quite low perigee over the target areas
in order to increase the scale of the photography; however, the low
perigee resulted in a relatively rapid decay of the orbit. The
orbit-adjust system compensated for the decay. It consiSted of a
cluster of small roCkets, known as drag make-up units, which were
fired individually and at selected intervals. Each firing
accelerated the vehicle slightly, boosting it back into
approximately its original orbital altitude.
The CORONA camera system was to undergo one more major
upgrading, convertingit into the system that is in operation today,
but we cannot leave the J-1 program without giving an account of One
mission failure of truly magnificent proportions. Program flight
number 78 (CORONA Mission Number 1005), a two-bucket J-1 system,
was launched on 27 April 1964. Launch and insertion into orbit
were uneventful. The master panoramic camera operated satisfactorily\
through the first bucket, but the slave panoramic camera failed
after 350 cycles when the film broke. Then the AGENA power supply
failed. Vandenberg transmitted a normal recovery enable command
on southbound revolution number 47 on 30 April. The vehicle
verified receipt of the command, but nothing happened. The recovery
command was repeated from various control stations--in both the
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normal and back-up LIMBOAT recovery modes--on 26 subsequent passes
extending through 20 May. The 'space vehicle repeatedly verified
that it had received the commands, but the ejection sequence did not.
occur. No further recovery commanding was attempted after the 20th,
since the vehicle had ceased on the 19th to acknowledge receipt.
The Mission 1005 space hardware was doomed to incineration. The
vehicle would gradually sink-into a-progressively lower orbit until
it finally entered the atmosphere and was destroyed in a fiery display
of exploding rockets and gas bottles and of blazing vehicle fragments.
It didn't happen quite that way, however. A commercial
photographer named Leonardo Davila telephoned the American Embassy,
in Caracas on 1 August 1964 to report that he had photographed a
space satellite that had fallen in Venezuela. The report set in
train a series of enquiries that discovered, after the fact, what
had happened to Mission 1005.
At six minutes past midnight on the morning of 26 May,
coinciding with northbound revolution number 452 of Mission 1005,
observers in Maracaibo, Venezuela, saw five incendiary objects
in the sky. Seven minutes later, the Moorestown, New Jersey,
SPADATS station made radar sightings of small residual objects in
the atmosphere. The DEW ling made three radar hits on objects of
unknown size. The Thule tracking station did not detect the
Mission 1005 vehicle on pass number 14-52'.:,
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On 7 July, 14-year-old Eladio Becerra and 40-year-old Gabino
Mora stumbled upon a batteredl'glimmering gold object lying on
nearly deserted mountainous terrain within a couple of miles of the
Colombian border and near the village of La Fria in Tachira State
in southwestern Venezuela. The object was on Farm No. 35 owned
by Pablo Garcia, but Becerra and Mora worked for Facundo Albarracin,
the owner of neighboring Farm No. 36. They reported their find to
their employer. He had the object moved about 100 yards onto his.; Own.
rti
property and then sent out word of the find an attempt to sell
the object. IHowever, the market for fallen space objects (even gold-
plated ones) is limited in Tachira, and Albarracin could not even
get a worthwhile offer to have it smuggled into nearby Colombia.
The find was not a total loss, however: by hacking and prying,
Albarracin 'and his employees managed to remove the radio transmitter
and various pieces of the take-up assembly, using thep as household
utensils and as toys for the children.
\\
Before longlIford of the find reached San Cristobal, the nearest
city of any size, and people began visiting La Fria to examine the
curious object from space. (It was the first buCket from Mission
1005 with one full spool of well charred film clearly visible.) One
of the visitors was the photographer, Davila, who passed the word to
1 the American Embassy. A team of CORONA program officers, ostensibly
representing the U.S. Air Force, flew to Caracas to direct the recovery
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SRV being carried out of La Frla on foot by Campesinos
On location in La Fria, Tachira Sold to the U. S. Air Force
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operation and ship the capsule and any other fragments that could be
found to the States for detailed examination. The capsule was carried
out part way by campesinos on foot and then was taken over by the
Venezuelan Defense Ministry and flown to Caracas. The USAF bought
the crumpled specimen from the Venezuelan government and quietly
dismissed the event as an unimportant NASA space experiment that
had gone astray.
The story rated only a dozen lines in the New York Times of
August fifth, but the local Venezuelan press had a field day.
Diario Catolico, of San Cristobal, along with a lengtiaVrppo#,
published three pictures of the capsule showing the charred roll
of film on the take-up spool. The photographs are reproduced on
the following page. The Daily:journal handled the 'story in
lighter vein with this parody of Longfellow:
I shot an arrow into the air.
It fell to earth I know not where.
Cape Kennedy signalled: "Where is it at you are?"
Responded the rocket: "La Fria, Tadhira."
Many of the bits and pieces that appeared in the first on-the-
scene photographs, as? yell as other items that were known to be in
the capsule, were kept by those who had handled it; however, three
objects were recovered that were not supposed to have been in the
capsule at all: three U.S. coins--two quarters and a buffalo nickel.
They apparently had been placed in the capsule by program personnel
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for later recovery as souvenirs from a space flight. The Washington
program office sent a sharply worded message to the west coast office
charging it with responsibility for ensuring that the practice of
souvenir-launching be stopped.
The CORONA technicians who examined the capsule after its
arrival in the States concluded that the re-entry of the SRV came
as a result of normal orbit degeneration with separation from the
instrument fairing, being caused by re-entry forces. The thrust
cone was sheared during separation but was retained by its harness
long enough to act as a drogue chute, thus preventing the capsule
from burning up during re-entry and stabilizing it for a hard, nose-
down landing.
The final major modification of the CORONA system got under
way in the spring of 1965 at a time when about a dozen and a half
of the two-bucket J-1 systems had been flown. The J-1 was performing
*
superbly, but it had little potential for within-system growth.
The new CORONA improvement program was begun with a series of
meetings among representatives of Lockheed, General Electric, ITEK?
and the various CORONA program offices to examine ways of bettering
the performance of the panoramic and stellar/index cameras and of
providing a more versatile command system. These were the resulting
design. goals established for a new panoramic 'camera:
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Removal of camera system oscillating members and reduction
of vibration from other moving components. .
Improvement of the velocity-over-height match.
Proper camera cycling rates at altitudes down to 80 n.m.
(the minimum J-1 operating altitude was 100 n.m.).
Elimination of camera failures caused by film pulling out of
the guide rails (an occasional problem with the J-1 system),
Exposure control through variable slit selection.
Capability of handling alternate film types and split film
loads.
Capability of handling ultra-thin base film (yielding .a 50%
increase in coverage with no increase in weight).
The panoramic camera that was developed to meet those design
goals was known as the constant rotator. The predecessor C'"
camera employed a combination of rotating lens cell and reciprocating
camera members. In the constant rotator, the lens cell and the
balance of the camera's optical system is mounted in a drum, and
the entire drum assembly is continuously rotated, thts eliminating
the reciprocating elements from the camera system. The film is s'N
exposed during a 70-degree angular segment of the drum's circular
sweep. The capability of using ultra-thin base film was one of the
design goals, but the camera was not actually built to accommodate
the thinner film. Attempts to use it in .the constant rotator were
eventually abandoned. In. all other respects,. however, the constant
rotator has been a resounding success. It.has yielded substantially
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better ground resolution in the photography, and it permits versatility
in operation far exceeding that available in reciprocating cameras.
The stellar/index camera in use was a complex and delicate
instrument with a long history of erratic performance. The efforts
at upgrading the performance of the stellar/index camera resulted
in an instrument with a dual-looking stellar element with the jaw-
breaking designation of Dual Improved Stellar Index Cameral commonly
referred to by its acronym: DISIC.
The new camera system, which was designated the J-3, consisted
of a pair of constant rotators, a pair of horizon cameras, and a
DISIC. The 3-3 system naturally retained the stereo capability
begun with the MURAL cameras and the two-bucket recovery concept
of the J-1. Apart from the improved picture-taking capability of
the hardware itself, the most significant advance represented by
the 3-3 was in the flexibility it allowed in command and control
of camera operations. Any conventional area search photographic
reconnaissance system is film-limited. . (When the film runs out,
the mission is finished--assuming, of course, that other mission-
limiting components of the system survive that long.) Consequently,
the ultimate goal of all of the CORONA improvement efforts was to pack
the maximum of the best possible quality of photography of important
intelligence targets into each roll of exposed film. The built-in
flexibility of the 3-3 system greatly increased the variety and.
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degree of controls that could be applied to camera operations, thus
substantially boosting the potential intelligence content of the
photography.
The first 3-3 system was launched on 15 September 1967, and
it is the system that isstill in operation today--yielding even
better photographic intelligence tha.the remarkably successful
predecessor J-1 system. However, the years of CORONA as the
intelligence community's only area search photographic reconnaissance
satellite are about to end with the advent of a wholly new system.
designed to do the job even better.
Looking back on CORONA as it is about to fade from the scenel,
it is not always easy to keep in mind that it was merely an
assemblage of inanimate objects designed and put together to
perform a mechanical task. The program began as a short-term
interim system, suffered through adversity in its formative years,
and then survived in. glory for the better part of a decade. Those,
who were associated with the program or came to depend upon its
product developed an affection for the beast that bordered on the
personql. They suffered with it in failure and revelled in its
successes.
The totality of CORONA's contributions to U.S. intelligence
holdings on denied areas and to the U.S. space program in general
is virtually unmeasurables Its progress was marked by a series of
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notable firsts: the first to recover objects from orbit, the
first to deliver intelligence information from a satellite, the
first to produce stereoscopic satellite photography, the first to
employ multiple re-entry vehicles, and the first satellite
reconnaissance program to pass the 1004(Mission mark. By March
19640 CORONA had photographed 23 of the 25 Soviet ICBM complexes
then in existence; three months later it had photographed all of
them. The value of CORONA to the U.S. intelligence effort is
given dimension by this statement in a 1968 intelligence report:.
"No new ICBM complexes have been established in the USSR during
the past year." So.' unequivocal a statement could be made only
because of the confidence held by the analysts that, if they were
there to be found, CORONA photography would have disclosed them.
When the final CORONA mission is flown, history will record
that the program explored and conquered the technological unknowns .
0,)
of space reconnaissance, lifted the curtain of secrecy that
screened developments within. the Soviet Union and Communist China,
and opened the way for the even more sophisticated follow-on
satellite reconnaissance systems.
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