From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #280 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 25 May 1995 Volume 05 : Number 280 In this issue: Corona Intelligence Satellites Built by Lockheed Martin (fwd) See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: The Space Wastrel Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 21:57:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Corona Intelligence Satellites Built by Lockheed Martin (fwd) Herewith the second and last of the CORONA articles. Once again no subscription details but there are some point of contact details at the end. Enjoy, TSW - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 24 May 95 09:10:51 PDT From: daemon@augusta.lmsc.lockheed.com To: press-release@augusta.lmsc.lockheed.com Subject: Corona Intelligence Satellites Built by Lockheed Martin CORONA INTELLIGENCE SATELLITES BUILT BY LOCKHEED MARTIN Editors' Note: The full story of CORONA's pivotal national security role in United States foreign policy is recounted in detail in the white paper "CORONA Program." SUNNYVALE, California, May 24, 1995 -- America's first imaging reconnaissance satellites, once highly classified as CORONA, were built from 1959-72 by Lockheed Space Systems under Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Air Force contracts spanning 145 launches that provided intelligence the government has called "virtually immeasurable." As President Reagan noted, "A generation of this nation's youth has grown up unaware that, in large measure, their security was ensured by the dedicated work of (Lockheed) employees." With its associated programs ARGON and LANYARD, CORONA lifted the curtain of secrecy that screened developments within the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and demonstrated that an early design could evolve capably. These efforts also resulted in new management methods, technical approaches, and related disciplines, services and equipment that became aerospace standards, and made possible NASA's Apollo program, which drew heavily from CORONA reentry technology. CORONA was an effort known as Discoverer within the Air Force's Weapon System 117L (WS-117L), for which Lockheed was awarded the prime contract in 1956. CORONA's purpose was space reconnaissance of denied areas. The CORONA concept was presented to President Dwight Eisenhower at the White House on February 7, 1958. Because of the exceptional sensitivity of CORONA's existence, the briefing was provided orally. The President indicated the CIA should have exclusive control of all of the intelligence phases of the operation. He said only a handful of people should know anything about it. In a follow-up meeting Eisenhower said emphatically that he believed the project should be centered in the new Defense space agency, doing what CIA wanted them to do. Lockheed served as technical adviser and integrator of all CORONA equipment other than the Thor booster, developed the orbiting Agena upper stage, and integrated and led the test, launching and on-orbit control operations. CORONA's first flight took place less than a year after final government approval to proceed. Agena, a spacecraft produced on an assembly line and used as a booster or satellite, was the heart of CORONA and other military and NASA systems. Though retired from space flight in 1987, Agena's 362 launches remain a world record. CORONA's payload was a vertical-looking, reciprocating, 70-degree panoramic camera developed by Itek that exposed Eastman Kodak film by scanning at right angles to the line of flight. Resolution in early flight years was in the range of 35 to 40 feet. By 1972, CORONA delivered resolutions of six to 10 feet, routinely. In the 1970s, flights could remain on orbit for 19 days, provide accurate attitude, position, and mapping information, and return coverage of 8,400,000 nm2 per mission. The film capsules were recovered by aircraft as the capsules parachuted to Earth after de-orbiting. As a backup, the capsules were recovered after landing in the ocean. CORONA's last launch on May 25, 1972 brought an end to a system that: #249# Imaged all Soviet missiles complexes #249# Imaged each Soviet submarine class from deployment to operational bases #249# Revealed the presence of Soviet missiles in Egypt protecting the Suez Canal #249# Identified Soviet nuclear assistance to the People's Republic of China #249# Monitored the SALT I treaty. # # # May, 1995 95-53 Contact: Jim Graham (408) 742-7531 Email: jimgraham@lmsc.lockheed.com ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #280 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@mail.orst.edu A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from mail.orst.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).