Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites
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This approach to space reconnaissance, in the view of some at the Air Force–funded RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, had significant drawbacks. First, the satellite had to carry enough film to be used over a one-year lifetime. Second, without a recorder for storing the images, the film had to be read out on each pass and then discarded on orbit. Third, the limited radio bandwidth and data transmission rate, coupled with the brief time available for communication while the satellite remained in line of sight of a ground station as it passed overhead, seriously restricted the number of images that could be relayed to Earth. In fact, RAND calculations yielded a daily figure equivalent to five or six 9 × 9-inch photographs whose quality was 100 lines per millimeter transmitted to Earth.69
Back in 1956, Richard C. Raymond in RAND’s electronics division had compared the long-lived film readout system with a recoverable payload in which exposed film would be returned to Earth in a reentry capsule after a short mission. “Film recovery,” Raymond calculated, “would yield at least two orders of magnitude more data” in a given period of time. RAND sent these findings to Headquarters USAF in March 1956. The RAND proposal, however, also had a drawback of its own. When seeking indications and warning of a potential surprise attack against the United States, one wanted information in near real time, not days later in the form of exposed reels of film that required developing. Rejecting the RAND proposal, the Air Force contracted with Lockheed for the WS-117L visual readout, infrared, and ferret (signals intelligence) system a few months later, in October.70
Amrom H. Katz, the Air Force physicist who had participated in the 1946 CROSSROADS atomic bomb tests and had joined RAND several years later, was a recognized camera expert and a champion of pursuing simple technical solutions rather than complex ones. Katz and a RAND associate who shared his views, Merton E. Davies, embraced Raymond’s answer to a fast-paced space reconnaissance project. While attending the annual meeting of the American Society of Photogrammetry in Washington on March 4–6, 1957, Davies encountered Frederic Wilcox of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation. Wilcox described for him a new Fairchild panoramic camera developed for an aerial drone. It fit inside a pod and the entire camera rotated in a drum. Davies thought about the complexity inherent in this design. By the time he and Katz boarded a plane for the flight back to the West Coast, he had a “hot idea” for space flight: fix the camera to the satellite and spin the entire ensemble.71 By late spring 1957, Davies and Katz were advocating the spinning camera and film-recovery scheme in briefings for scientific and military officials who visited RAND. These included Colonel Fritz Oder, Air Force director of WS-117L, his deputy, Navy Commander Bob Truax, and eventually members of the Reconnaissance Panel of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), the SAB’s ad hoc Panel on Advanced Weapons Technology and Environment, the Defense Department’s Advisory Group on Special Capabilities (Stewart Committee), and those of the Science Advisory Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization. James Killian and Edwin Land were among the members of the last group. The two RAND champions of a recoverable space reconnaissance capsule system completed their formal study, with the assistance of other RAND coauthors, and issued it on November 12, 1957.72
Though aware of both the planned film readout and recovery space reconnaissance systems by mid-1957, Killian and Land still favored ongoing aerial overflight reconnaissance to meet the nation’s immediate intelligence requirements. Both had recognized reconnaissance satellites as a system of future consequence in the 1955 TCP report. They had recommended that the nation prepare for this activity by establishing in public international law the principle of “freedom of space.” To that end, the president had approved the IGY satellite project and its related space policy.73 The launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957, which helped establish the legal precedent they sought, also caused them both to reconsider the timing and technical prospects of space reconnaissance. On October 24, reporting as members of the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, but after hearing the satellite briefings by RAND and WS-117L officials, they advised Eisenhower that neither a new reconnaissance aircraft under study at the CIA (Project OXCART,
which would become the supersonic A-12/SR-71) nor the Air Force WS-117L readout reconnaissance satellite would achieve operational status before 1960. They recommended evaluating the interim solution proposed for an advanced reconnaissance system: the film-recovery satellite advocated at RAND and adopted by the WS-117L office.74
By the fall of 1957, both Killian and Land had Eisenhower’s complete confidence. Project AQUATONE’s U-2 had proved a stunning technical success and an intelligence bonanza. If a satellite that ejected a film capsule for recovery on Earth appeared promising to them, it would be investigated. On October 28 “the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council notified the Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence that the president had asked for a joint report from them on the status of the advanced [reconnaissance] systems.” On December 5 Undersecretary of Defense Donald Quarles, another trusted presidential confidant, replied on behalf of the Defense Department and of DCI Allen Dulles. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, he said, his review would be conducted through oral briefings. Held later in the month, the technical evaluation apparently confirmed the views of Killian and Land. The WS-117L satellite that took pictures, developed them on board, then scanned the film electronically and radioed the images to stations on Earth faced daunting, long-term technical challenges. If atmospheric reentry techniques based on ICBM warhead technology could be perfected, film exposed on one- or two-day missions might be returned to Earth for developing and analysis. The parachutes and air-sea recovery system already perfected to retrieve GENETRIX cameras and film added confidence in this approach.75
The interim reconnaissance satellite system that Quarles compared with the WS-117L readout system was the same plan that had been described in November by Davies and Katz, and had already been endorsed by Fritz Oder and Bernard Schriever. It consisted of a Thor IRBM liquid-propellant launch vehicle with an Aerobee 75 solid-propellant second stage developed for the Vanguard IGY satellite launcher. Mounted atop the Aerobee was a football-shaped third-stage satellite that contained the camera, film, and a small solid-propellant recovery rocket. The spin-stabilized satellite contained a Fairchild-manufactured transverse panoramic slit camera that featured a 12-inch focal-length f/3.5 lens, and could cover a narrow angle of approximately 21 degrees. Wide-angle scanning, accomplished by spinning the satellite, moved the lens across the field during the exposure time. Pictures were to be taken only when the lens, mounted perpendicular to the roll axis, swung past the earth below. At 135–140 miles altitude, the camera would produce a resolution on the surface of 60 feet at 40 lines per millimeter.76
On the West Coast, Oder had counted himself among the first Air Force converts to the Davies and Katz recoverable reconnaissance satellite concept back in the summer of 1957. Indeed, by August he had sold the concept to his superiors, new Major General Bernard Schriever, commander of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, and Schriever’s deputy, Brigadier General Osmond Ritland. The three men also conferred with Richard Leghorn, by now a member of the Aerial Inspection Subcommittee of the President’s Arms Control and Disarmament Group. All agreed. If this effort was to succeed quickly, it would require presidential approval and the highest of national priorities, and needed to be prosecuted covertly like Project AQUATONE. Schriever would soon approach select members of the Air Staff and others in Washington about this project and about a “second story” that might be devised to provide a cover. Oder’s WS-117L program office in Inglewood, California, meanwhile, included the Thor-boosted reconnaissance satellite, identified as Program IIA, in its 1957 WS-117L Development Plan. Lockheed also was instructed to plan for this addition to the WS-117L program.77
In Washington, D.C., on November 12, 1957, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development Richard E. Horner carried out
his own technical assessment for Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy. He affirmed that a film-recovery satellite could reach operational status at least a year before the WS-117L readout satellite.78 A few days later, on November 15, in the aftermath of the second, more spectacular Soviet Sputnik launching, Eisenhower named James Killian to be his special assistant for science and technology and to serve as chairman of the new President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). In his new capacity as presidential science advisor, and still serving as chairman of the PBCFIA, in early December Killian conferred at the White House with Polaroid’s Land, the CIA’s Bissell, President Eisenhower’s staff assistant Army Colonel Andrew Goodpaster, and Schriever. The men reviewed aircraft strategic reconnaissance capabilities and the potential options for satellite reconnaissance. A film-recovery satellite acquired and managed through a covert program, they concluded, represented the nation’s best near-term choice to augment the U-2. A Thor IRBM and the Lockheed liquid-propellant Agena booster-satellite developed for the WS-117L, they agreed, enabled a heavier payload. The larger and more powerful Lockheed upper stage, which could be stabilized on all three axes in space, would be substituted in place of the smaller solid-propellant Aerobee 75.79
On February 6, 1958, a few weeks after Quarles’s December review of strategic reconnaissance systems, Killian and Land met with DCI Allen Dulles, Secretary of Defense McElroy, and Undersecretary of Defense Quarles. They agreed to separate the Air Force film-recovery satellite Program IIA from the WS-117L program and assign it to a CIA-Air Force team, again led by Bissell. The next day, on February 7, Killian and Land met with Eisenhower to discuss the plan. Land explained for the president that they could expect a lower resolution of objects at the earth’s surface in photographs taken from space, compared with the resolution obtained in photographs taken by high-altitude balloons and aircraft. But the proposed film-recovery satellite, he said, did not radiate any electronic signals and would be almost undetectable. The Air Force WS-117L readout reconnaissance satellite program, which already had received a good deal of publicity, would continue, thus providing the Air Force and its WS-117L contractors an opportunity to surmount the technical challenges and deliver near real-time images.
After listening to the recommendation, the president agreed that an interim film-recovery satellite project should begin, but independently and covertly, separated from the larger reconnaissance satellite program and managed in a manner like the U-2. The CIA, Eisenhower emphasized, should be in charge and the new Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) should execute its orders.80 In February 1958, with scant experience in or technical skills associated with launch vehicles and automated satellites, the CIA was thus charged with managing a crucial space project. The president’s decision represented his preference for civilian control of national intelligence and his confidence in the men who had quickly and successfully discharged Project AQUATONE. That preference and confidence notwithstanding, to execute the space reconnaissance project the agency unquestionably would have to depend on General Schriever and the team he had assembled at the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division and its aerospace contractors.
FIRST YOU SEE IT AND THEN YOU DON’T: CORONA UNDERWAY
A new entrant in the civil-military space arena, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was established in the Defense Department on February 7, 1958. The president assigned to ARPA, along with military space activity, temporary responsibility for all U.S. civil satellite projects. With the authority and responsibility for directing astronautical ventures thus consolidated, Eisenhower hoped this new agency might eliminate the interservice feuding over seemingly glamorous space missions. In military space matters, the Air Force now had to respond to ARPA orders in developing and conducting space flight operations. Temporarily, ARPA also would be involved in the covert satellite reconnaissance effort. It would openly fund Air Force procurement of the Thor boosters and Agena upper-stage satellites. The CIA would provide the security system and covertly procure reconnaissance components, such as the cameras and film-reentry capsules. The Air Force would furnish the overall management and technical infrastructure.81
Bespeaking the enormous influence that Eisenhower’s scientist-consultants now exerted in the administration, a day or two after meeting with the president, Polaroid’s peripatetic Edwin Land visited CIA headquarters and informed a startled Richard Bissell that he would now direct a covert reconnaissance satellite project. DCI Allen Dulles, to be sure, knew of his subordinate’s impending assignment, but it was Land who told Bissell of his new responsibility. At the CIA, in addition to the covert Project AQUATONE for which he also served as director, Bissell held the official title of Special Assistant to the DCI for Planning and Development. Bissell drew the CIA cadre for the satellite project from his Development Projects Staff. Before month’s end he confirmed as his deputy director Air Force Brigadier General Osmond J. Ritland, Schriever’s vice commander at the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, who had served so ably as his first deputy on Project AQUATONE. Under Ritland, the Air Force once again would furnish the project infrastructure, in this case developing, launching, commanding, and controlling all of the satellites on orbit in addition to providing recovery of the film capsule above and, in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.82
Before work on the project could proceed, Eisenhower officials first had to eliminate the publicly known WS-117L Thor-based reconnaissance satellite film-recovery Program IIA. Next, they had to resurrect it as a covert satellite project with a plausible “cover” (or “second story”) to account for its existence. Finally, Richard Bissell had to assemble and organize the contractor team that would execute the covert satellite project. In the first instance, Herbert York, ARPA’s chief scientist, followed the instructions of Undersecretary of Defense Donald Quarles. Quarles prepared a directive that was signed by ARPA’s newly named director, Roy W. Johnson, and sent to Air Force Secretary James H. Douglas Jr. on February 28, 1958. It canceled the Air Force Thor-boosted reconnaissance satellite recovery component of the WS-117L program and authorized in its place the Air Force Discoverer Project, which would develop a “biomedical capsule” for the recovery of biological specimens lofted into space atop Thor-Agena launch vehicles. This new scientific biomedical space project, the directive asserted, was expected to contribute to America’s early achievement of manned space flight.83 It was Quarles who “set this all up,” York recalled, and who pulled the strings of this public sleight-of-hand.84
Simultaneously, at the monthly review meeting of Air Force and contractor participants, John H. (Jack) Carter, Lockheed’s manager of WS-117L, announced without explanation that Program IIA had been canceled. As one attendee recalled, RAND’s Amrom Katz and Merton Davies, the two men who had fashioned that program, were in the audience and they jumped out of their chairs:
They went ballistic, Amrom particularly. Amrom took it upon himself to try to get the effort reinstated and he began going around the country briefing anyone who would listen about the unwise decision to cancel the recoverable camera system. I mean he had a cause! He became so well known as an agitator on this that he disqualified himself for being cleared for what was now a black program—even though he had conceived it! The folks in charge knew that if they cleared Amrom, he would immediately cease agitating and that would tip everyone else that the program was underway.85
During the next six weeks Bissell identified the contractor team and its leadership and selected a name for the effort: Project CORONA. The name came first, confirmed at a meeting of project officials on March 10, 1958.86 On March 15 Bissell met with General Ritland and confirmed the choice of the Douglas Aircraft Thor booster and Lockheed Agena second stage for CORONA. Moreover, they determined to make Lockheed the system engineer, responsible for the technical direction and integration of the entire effort. Lockheed’s Project CORONA manager therefore would have to be one of its best engineers. Finally, they discussed funding an alternate came
ra to backstop the primary Fairchild-General Electric system.
The decision to consider a backup camera arose at least in part in response to an unsolicited proposal that Bissell had received a month before from a new firm: Itek (Information Technology). The firm’s founders, Richard Leghorn as president and Duncan Macdonald and Arthur Tyler as vice presidents, had incorporated on September 27, 1957. Tyler and Leghorn were Eastman Kodak executives, and Macdonald now was Boston University’s Dean of the Graduate School (Tyler had invented the Eastman Kodak “Minicard” system, an IBM punched card that contained a high-resolution microfilm negative, which might be a photographic image or an engineering drawing, but could be sorted and retrieved by a computer.) On October 4 Sputnik I shocked the world. For the nascent “document retrieval” company, that shock provided the impetus for a rapid takeoff. At the financial closing on October 10, Itek’s founders put up only a modest amount of money while Laurance S. Rockefeller and other Rockefeller family members furnished most of the funds required for the first few months of operation. Within weeks, Leghorn negotiated a subcontract with Ramo-Wooldridge to develop and manufacture equipment that would process and catalogue the images produced by the WS-117L readout reconnaissance satellites. The firm now began to hire personnel for this effort.87
In the meantime, the Air Force had advised Boston University that it would cease funding operation of the BU Physical Research Laboratories (BUPRL—formerly the BU Optical Research Laboratory) that since 1946 had operated under contract to Brigadier General George Goddard’s Aeronautical Photographic Laboratory at WPAFB. Directed by F. Dow Smith, chairman of the BU physics department, with Walter Levison serving as his deputy, the nonprofit BUPRL over the years had designed and developed numerous aerial cameras for the Air Force.