Air-launch from B-58 or A-12 OXCART - 1962

[blackstar]

The Apollo KA-80A panoramic camera was carried on the later Apollo missions. Manufactured by Itek. You can read about that here:

The ITEK Panoramic Camera

That camera was developed (I think--too lazy to check) for the SR-71. It was also adapted to fly in the U-2. I think that the Air Force version was the KA-80 and the Apollo version was the KA-80A. But there's no good description of what was changed for space use. There's also no good history of the development of that camera. I do have an article about the Apollo version that appeared in a photogrammetry and remote sensing journal, but it was less detailed and exhaustive than I wanted.

The later Apollo missions also had a laser mapping camera that I believe was manufactured by Fairchild Camera and Industries Corporation. I had my suspicions that it was originally an aerial camera, but I found no evidence of that.

I actually got to see the Apollo 18 PanCam in person back around 2002 when they uncrated it at the Smithsonian's Paul E. Garber facility and it was beautiful, pristine. It was just bright white, like it had been manufactured yesterday. They crated it back up and never have displayed it. I saw it with the NRO historian, who said that he had 8 more just like it sitting in a classified warehouse somewhere. But his were still classified (or more precisely, had classified components).

 

[Byeman]

Where does the Shuttle Large Format Camera fit in with all this?

 

[blackstar]

Where does the Shuttle Large Format Camera fit in with all this?

LFC is essentially an updated HEXAGON Mapping Camera. Although I have not dug into it deeply, after the HMC stopped flying, there was some interest in obtaining similar format imagery. That led to the LFC on shuttle.

As to why the HEXAGON Mapping Camera stopped flying, that's a bit complex. But there's an entire history of that camera system on the NRO website. It's a pretty good history too. I just have not gone through it in detail. The opening chapter that explains the history of satellite reconnaissance is a good overview.

 

[Archibald]

I often wonder if the LFC was related to the WASP / ZEUS / DAMON studies.
NASA gets the KH-9 mapping camera onboard the Shuttle
NRO wanted the KH-9 main system onboard the Shuttle

Or maybe it was 100% unrelated.

Keeping my short list updated...

-Samos for lunar orbiter
-GAMBIT for Apollo (UPWARD, plus the Percheron bizarre proposal by G.E)
-CORONA for Landsat job
-DORIAN mirrors and ATS, for astronomy or Skylab, or the MMT
-HEXAGON mapping camera for the Shuttle
-KENNEN KH-11 & Hubble still unclear relationship
-FIA remains for WFIRST...

 

[blackstar]

I often wonder if the LFC was related to the WASP / ZEUS / DAMON studies.
NASA gets the KH-9 mapping camera onboard the Shuttle
NRO wanted the KH-9 main system onboard the Shuttle

Or maybe it was 100% unrelated.

Well, I think that all this stuff is related in some way. After all, they were looking at how to fulfill the demand for different types of imagery.

There was a lot of concern within NRO by the late 1970s that with the pending retirement of HEXAGON--it was then scheduled to have its last mission in 1985--that they would not have sufficient search imagery. An upgraded KH-11 was going to provide that search imagery, but there were doubts that it could do so effectively. So there may have been some talk about what else could be done in the interim.

I recently presented a paper at AIAA SciTech on the HEXAGON and the shuttle. It's a much updated version of my series of articles from a few years ago. In the wake of the August 1985 loss of a KH-11 there was some discussion about flying an LFC mission on the shuttle for stuff like agricultural (i.e. crop yields) intelligence.

 

[blackstar]

I often wonder if the LFC was related to the WASP / ZEUS / DAMON studies.
NASA gets the KH-9 mapping camera onboard the Shuttle
NRO wanted the KH-9 main system onboard the Shuttle

Or maybe it was 100% unrelated.

Well, I think that all this stuff is related in some way. After all, they were looking at how to fulfill the demand for different types of imagery.

There was a lot of concern within NRO by the late 1970s that with the pending retirement of HEXAGON--it was then scheduled to have its last mission in 1985--that they would not have sufficient search imagery. An upgraded KH-11 was going to provide that search imagery, but there were doubts that it could do so effectively. So there may have been some talk about what else could be done in the interim.

I recently presented a paper at AIAA SciTech on the HEXAGON and the shuttle. It's a much updated version of my series of articles from a few years ago. In the wake of the August 1985 loss of a KH-11 there was some discussion about flying an LFC mission on the shuttle for stuff like agricultural (i.e. crop yields) intelligence.

And just to clarify: the LFC flew on STS-41G in October 1984. In December 1985 there was some mention within the US intelligence community about possibly flying the LFC again. But that never happened.

 

[blackstar]

 

[blackstar]

I had trouble adding those images, so I'm doing the text separately. There are probably much better quality versions of those images on the internet, but that's what I found quickly. Two images show the Apollo PanCam (made by Itek) and one image shows the Apollo Mapping Camera (made by Fairchild).

That PanCam was derived from an SR-71/U-2 camera and it's a sweet little design. Ran the film off one spool through the camera which rotated the lens to produce a long thin image, then the film ran to the takeup reel. I think the overall length was about 5-6 feet.

 

[Archibald]

I was digging air-launched documents across the NRO and CIA archives and I've found what seems to be another TOWN HALL document.

An extremely detailed, 80 pages long description of a B-58 launching a Minuteman, payload to orbit 1500 pounds best case (700 kg). Original document, plus a cleaned up and OCR copy.

 

[Archibald]

Have you come across the one showing an air launch from a C-130? I remember seeing that in the CREST documents over a decade ago.

Hello,

Found it !

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...es-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740726

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lockheed-c-130-hercules-prototypes-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740695

 

[blackstar]

Hello,

Found it !

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...es-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740726

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lockheed-c-130-hercules-prototypes-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740695

Oh wow, cool. I found that, the B-58 Town Hall proposal, and the A-12 Blackbird proposal, at the National Archives back when they were first released (whatever date is on the document). There was also a sub-launched proposal. I wrote about the sub-launched one somewhere, and Town Hall. I didn't get around to doing the Blackbird one until after somebody else did. The C-130 one just lingered in my memory but I could not find the document. So many thanks. I'll have to write about that.

And I should put these in context with the "crisis reconnaissance" studies a few years later--SPIN-SCAN, FASTBACK, PINTO and a few others. My suspicion is that the earlier studies like the C-130 one were for covert launch. The latter ones were for crisis reconnaissance. The technology was not good for any of them.

 

[Archibald]

You are welcome !

 

[Archibald]

My suspicion is that the earlier studies like the C-130 one were for covert launch

I can see why the CIA wanted to keep a low profile when peeping at satellites. It was their usual dirty secret business, except in space.

 

[blackstar]

I can see why the CIA wanted to keep a low profile when peeping at satellites. It was their usual dirty secret business, except in space.

I don't know if the CIA actually solicited these studies. They may have been unsolicited by the contractors. And the contractors may have assumed that covert launch was important.

The problem is that the camera that would fit in a small launch vehicle was going to be low-res. It could not see much. It might be useful for detecting troop movements, but it was not going to capture an airplane or a missile that might normally be hidden from a satellite.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Now an interesting and relevant question is how much anybody in the US intelligence community considered the value of indications and warning intelligence, i.e. the kind of intelligence that might reveal major activities before they happened, such as troop deployments. But I've found very little on this during this period. It seems like for the most part by the mid-1960s the intelligence community accepted that reconnaissance satellites were going to provide excellent intelligence on strategic forces (i.e. counting ICBM silos, bombers, subs, ships, nuclear weapons facilities) and they were happy with that. Nobody pushed for more timely intelligence during this period, meaning satellites that could return their imagery within 24 hours or so. It just was not considered.

It's usually the military that is more interested in Indications and Warning intelligence, since that's essentially all about what's happening later this week. The intelligence agencies are more interested in what's happening next year or so.

(Or were historically. I think it's gotten a bit better these days)

Yes, I'm responding to my own post. I found what I was thinking of. This was a 1963 proposal for an A-12 launch of a reconnaissance satellite.

CIA And Skunk Works Secretly Planned To Turn The A-12 Spy Plane Into A Space Launch Mothership

The proposal sheds more light on decades of secretive U.S. work to realize air-launched space access capabilities.

www.thedrive.com

You can see the CORONA camera in there. It looks pretty much the same as a schematic of a KH-3 CORONA. So the performance would have been essentially the same. And that raises the same question as for all these other air-launch proposals: what's the benefit? What's the advantage over the existing systems?

It's not coming overhead at a known time.

Satellites have a known ground track and time overhead, once someone gets a radar track for a couple of orbits.

But if you can pop a satellite up from an odd angle and get it over the target on the first orbit (or even suborbital), you can get information that is usually concealed.

I don't know if the CIA actually solicited these studies. They may have been unsolicited by the contractors. And the contractors may have assumed that covert launch was important.

The problem is that the camera that would fit in a small launch vehicle was going to be low-res. It could not see much. It might be useful for detecting troop movements, but it was not going to capture an airplane or a missile that might normally be hidden from a satellite.

Again, the point is that it's not a known time for imagery. Especially for a low suborbital lob.

You could also do a side look (forget what the technical term is), turn the cameras to look closer to the horizon than straight down. This adds some camera distortion and makes for a much longer range to the area to be imaged, so it's more likely to use a good camera/satellite for side looks.

A side look from a known satellite means that you need to have everything sensitive covered at all times that said satellites can draw line of sight to you, instead of just when directly overhead.

 

[Archibald]

Recently I've downloaded the Purcell panel report (see attached 1 B 0029, see below a link to a much cleaner and less redacted document)

http://planet4589.org/space/docs/nro/hex/48.pdf

This was a 1963 all important study of future spysats requirements, at a time when GAMBIT and CORONA had started defining (and suceeding at) two key missions: broad area coverage of the Soviet Union landmass; and pinpointing details at high resolution. @blackstar detailed the Purcell panel here
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1761/2

The other document is a post- Purcell discussion. And guess what ? they compared the B-58/Minuteman and A-12/Polaris proposals for air-launching spysats.

 

[Archibald]

Cross posting my post from another thread.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/air-launched-reconnaissance-satellites.10403/#post-751406

Long story short: the two 1962 proposals - A-12/Polaris and B-58/Minuteman - were compared by the Purcell panel the year after.

I've asked moderators to merge the two threads.

 

[blackstar]

Recently I've downloaded the Purcell panel report (see attached 1 B 0029, see below a link to a much cleaner and less redacted document)

http://planet4589.org/space/docs/nro/hex/48.pdf

This was a 1963 all important study of future spysats requirements, at a time when GAMBIT and CORONA had started defining (and suceeding at) two key missions: broad area coverage of the Soviet Union landmass; and pinpointing details at high resolution. @blackstar detailed the Purcell panel here
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1761/2

The other document is a post- Purcell discussion. And guess what ? they compared the B-58/Minuteman and A-12/Polaris proposals for air-launching spysats.

You are being a bit confusing. Why did you attach the older, crappier version of the Purcell report, but then provide a link to the cleaner, undoubtedly newer, version of the report? Why not just provide the best and latest version of the document?

As to the more important issue, what is the significance of this?

My preliminary read was that Purcell Panel said "consider a covert satellite" in July 1963, and the second document in September 1963 indicates that somebody did consider it. A chronology would be helpful.

Okay, I just looked that up--the AP-12 (OXCART) air launch proposal was made in September 1962. The TOWN HALL proposal was made in May 1962. So both studies existed long before Purcell deliberations.

The excerpt you provide doesn't indicate the resolution of those proposed systems. That might be worth considering.

I think you'd actually be better off having these kinds of discussions on the NASASpaceflight.com forum where there is considerably more discussion of historical satellite intelligence issues than here.

In the interest of completeness, here is the section from the Purcell Panel on covert satellites:

 

[Archibald]

Because the cleaner variant is too big for this forum attachment. That's the reason !

What I was trying to say (not english borne speaker) : that the two studies of 1962 found their way into the Purcell panel the year after. Which seems to have compared them (side by side or back to back) for a "covert satellite" broader program.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Because the cleaner variant is too big for this forum attachment. That's the reason !

Size reduced from 44MB to 2MB.

 

[Michel Van]

I wonder if the Space Shuttle one orbit Mission was for reconnaissance and would fit this category here ?

USAF look into large space Glider that had MOL hardware in Cargo bay, as future evolution of KH-10 Dorian.
it would make sense to do such mission in crisis, to gain high resolution image and other data fast in hours to Pentagon.

 

[archipeppe]

I wonder if the Space Shuttle one orbit Mission was for reconnaissance and would fit this category here ?

USAF look into large space Glider that had MOL hardware in Cargo bay, as future evolution of KH-10 Dorian.
it would make sense to do such mission in crisis, to gain high resolution image and other data fast in hours to Pentagon.

You have to ask it to @blackstar

 

[Byeman]

I wonder if the Space Shuttle one orbit Mission was for reconnaissance and would fit this category here ?

No, it was for deploying or retrieving a spacecraft without overflying the Soviet landmass.

 

[Michel Van]

THX for Information, Byeman