NRO release: History of Agena

[Michel Van]

The National Reconnaissance Office
release series of PDF about use of Agena for there goals

Note: some page are in poor quality

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002a.PDF

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002b.PDF

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002c.PDF

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002d.PDF

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002e.PDF

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena/SC-2017-00002f.PDF

 

[Dynoman]

Great information, especially from an administrative history perspective. An interesting read is the NRO's GOPSS satellite integration to the Agena in the link below.
http://www.nro.gov/foia/CAL-Records/Cabinet4/DrawerE/4%20E%200007.pdf

 

[Michel Van]

Interesting is PDF SC-2017-0002e

Here is NRO involvement in Gemini program
NASA made a Defense Purchase Requests for use of Agena as Target for Gemini

I wonder if NASA made similar request for there Space probes launch with Atlas-Agena ?

 

[Archibald]

The NRO was pretty paranoid about everyone getting close from their spy satellites, even plain old Agena rocket stages. Well, considering the mess that was the U-2 shoot down, maybe they were right.

 

[blackstar]

The National Reconnaissance Office
release series of PDF about use of Agena for there goals

The documents were declassified in 1997.

 

[blackstar]

Interesting is PDF SC-2017-0002e

Here is NRO involvement in Gemini program
NASA made a Defense Purchase Requests for use of Agena as Target for Gemini

I wonder if NASA made similar request for there Space probes launch with Atlas-Agena ?

USAF was responsible for the Agena, not NRO. The agreements were between NASA and USAF. Note that NASA was also cooperating with USAF on procurement of the Atlas for the Mercury flights, and Titan II for Gemini. So there was already a relationship when NASA started needing Agena.

From vague memory, there was actually much more USAF involvement on providing the Titan II than there was for the Atlas. I don't know/remember why, but it may have been that for Titan II USAF personnel handled the procurement, whereas with Atlas NASA may have been allowed to directly procure the Atlas from the contractor. Either way, the greater USAF involvement in Titan II for Gemini also led to USAF people thinking that Gemini would be a useful post-Dyna-Soar vehicle for Air Force needs. That led to the short-lived Blue Gemini program. (Note: Blue Gemini was NOT the Gemini for MOL, that was Gemini-B and occurred after Blue Gemini was canceled.)

As for the GATV, it was a significant procurement, requiring a lot of review. The Agena then in production was not man-rated and NASA needed it man-rated if they were going to plug a Gemini into it. That meant higher reliability and of course more testing. One interesting change was the flight termination system on the GATV. They could not use the standard flight termination system, because there was concern that if a Gemini was plugged into it and it accidentally went off it would damage the Gemini. So what they did instead was mount a kind of shotgun slug device to the GATV on an angle. It would fire the slug through the two tanks at an angle so that it got both tanks, but if it accidentally detonated in orbit, the slug would not hit the Gemini.

 

[Archibald]

Some Agena numbers
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_stage/agena.htm
-362 launched,

of which I get a total of
-245 "optical spysats" (broadly speaking: Key Hole KH-1 to KH-8 plus SAMOS plus the few Discoverer not counted as Corona)
Of which,
-92 GAMBIT
-26 "unsuccessful spysats" : Samos, KH-5, KH-6
-Discoverer / Corona numbers are trickier - 127 ?

Also
-46 NASA civilian missions
That is:
-9 Ranger
-6 Agena target vehicle
-5 Mariner
-5 Lunar Orbiter
-5 Nimbus
-6 OGO
-3 ATS
-2 Alouette
-1 OAO
-1 PAGEOS
-1 ECHO
-1 SERT-II
-1 Seasat

Wikipedia says 365 Agenas and 33 NASA missions - and they are probably wrong...

 

[blackstar]

We never got a full list of Agena numbers. It would not surprise me if somewhere there is a filing cabinet at a Lockheed building that has a list of all of them.

And of course there were some built that never got launched. The "Discoverer Zero" Agena was number 1019 (does that mean the 19th Agena built?). It was damaged on the pad and was apparently used for ground training later. Then there was the first KH-7 GAMBIT that crumpled over on the pad. There are no good records about that, but I was told by Kodak guys that it was not a flight satellite. What about the Agena? Was it a flight-qualified Agena that was lost?