KH-7 GAMBIT-1 / KH-8 GAMBIT-3 / KH-9 HEXAGON

Further to the above and this is direct quoting Blackstar on NSF:

There is some good information in the newly-released documents.

The long interview with Reid Mayo of the Naval Research Laboratory has a lot of great details and flavor about their development of satellites. One story Mayo told was about his meeting with an admiral to tell him about what NRL was doing. He mentioned that NRL had been tracking the brand new Soviet helicopter carrier Moskva as it deployed, detecting its unique radar emissions. The admiral got mad, saying that the Navy was looking for the Moskva, so why hadn’t NRL informed them where it was? It is a great anecdote showing how even while NRL was developing new systems and capabilities, the Navy had a demand for immediate intelligence.

We now have much better info on the P-11 satellites and on some of them in particular. An official history stated that WESTON’s launch had been delayed by more than two years “by a combination of trouble in passing the system test and the overwhelming priority of the ABM-intercept P-11s.” But the new documents indicate that the WESTON payload problem was the primary reason for the delay. (This might be open to interpretation, but I think it is fair to say that most of the delay was due to a technical problem.)

We have new information and illustrations of the FARRAH satellites, and confirmation of some things that I had learned through sources.

FARRAH I and II were the box-shaped satellites launched off KH-9 HEXAGONs.

FARRAH III and later were the “tuna can” shaped satellites, although seeing them covered in antennas and insulating foil (mylar? Kapton?) they look less like tuna cans.

One new confirmation is that FARRAH IV never turned on in orbit at all. It suffered from a command sequencer failure. Somebody told me that several years ago, but now we have it in an official document. That person also said that it was ultimately traced to software originally developed for a shuttle launch but never fully updated for the Titan II. That remains unconfirmed, and it would be nice to have the failure investigation report for FARRAH IV. I wonder if that is releasable?

More info on FARRAH V. And evidence indicating that both FARRAH III and V were still operating after November 2004.

Also, there was a FARRAH VI. It was partially completed and placed in storage when the program was canceled in the early 1990s. I wonder if it is still sitting around in classified storage somewhere?

The follow-on to FARRAH in 1992 was named Lisa. What actress was named Lisa?

The GAMBIT mission launched in March 1976 attained a resolution of 4.5 inches, "the best to date."
Click to expand...
 
Who watches the birds? Cold War era launch vehicle photographs

During the Cold War, the US Air Force launched hundreds of rockets from both the East and West Coasts. Usually, the military made some kind of announcement that a launch had occurred, or was about to occur, without releasing any further details, and for many years, rarely releasing any photographs. The result was that many military space launches—probably a significant majority of them—had no public photographic evidence that they happened. But starting in the late 1990s, an Australian space enthusiast by the name of Peter Hunter began collecting photographs of United States Thor, Delta, Atlas, and eventually Titan launches. Hunter was a 747 pilot for Qantas, and during his long layovers in Los Angeles he visited an archive of launch vehicle photos near San Diego. He was able to gain access to it through his professionalism, charm, and Australian accent. Over many years of hard work, he produced a collection of high-resolution scans of as many launches and launch vehicles as possible, later providing copies to multiple museums and historians.
Click to expand...
 
Who watches the birds? Cold War era launch vehicle photographs (part 2)

Starting in the late 1990s, an Australian space enthusiast by the name of Peter Hunter began collecting photographs of United States Thor, Delta, Atlas, and eventually Titan launches. Over many years of hard work, he produced a collection of high-resolution scans of as many launches and launch vehicles as possible, later providing copies to multiple museums and historians.

The value of Peter Hunter’s work was significant for writers of military missile and space history, because it enabled writers and publishers to be more varied in what they showed, rather than using the same officially-released publicity photos as every other publication, something that was common in space history books in the 1980s and later.

Now, a new collection of launch photographs has closed some of the gaps. John Hilliard worked for the National Reconnaissance Office before he retired and began collecting rocket launch photos. His collection includes some of the missing photos in Peter Hunter’s collection.

Thanks to Hunter and Hilliard, we now have launch photos of many of the KH-9 HEXAGON and KH-11 reconnaissance satellites. HEXAGON was a large satellite that used film to scan vast areas of the Earth to detect new activities and count weapons systems. Twenty satellites were launched and HEXAGON operated from 1971 until the last mission ended in a dramatic launch explosion in 1986.

The KH-11, code-named KENNEN, entered service in late 1976 and its descendants were launched into the 2000s. KENNEN was an electro-optical reconnaissance satellite that could relay images in near-real time to the ground, meaning that it could take a photo over downtown Moscow that within an hour or so could be seen by somebody at the Pentagon. The National Reconnaissance Office has declassified the name and the history leading to the decision to build the KENNEN, but not any technical information about the satellite itself. In 1985 one of the satellites failed to reach orbit when its Titan rocket malfunctioned. This was the beginning of a string of launch failures for the United States and a period during which American on-orbit reconnaissance assets were stretched thin.
Click to expand...
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom