Posted on 01/01/2012 12:14:42 AM PST by neverdem
The amazing story of how our supersecret, Cold-War spy satellites took photos of the Soviet empire and dropped them to Earth, all without the help of computers, bandwidth, or digital cameras.
Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it: build a camera that can take high-resolution photographs of the Earth from orbit and return them to the Central Intelligence Agency. There's only one catch: you don't get to use a computer or a single kilobyte of network bandwidth.
That's the task that the United States government gave to a group of engineers at the optical instruments company Perkin-Elmer in Danbury, Connecticut at the height of the Cold War. It was October 1966 and the new development of the new satellite system, Hexagon, was underway. The project was a follow-on to very successful Corona satellite program and a complement to the higher-resolution Gambit satellite.
All these programs required 315,000 feet of film to be dropped in re-entry vehicles from orbit and retrieved in mid-air by U.S. forces. Gambit and Hexagon were declassified late this year, and its engineers were profiled this week by the Associated Press.
Hexagon was known as "Big Bird" and up to 1,000 Perkin-Elmer employees worked on the program during its peak in the 1970s. Almost nothing was known about the program, except for scraps of information that leaked out to reporters. For example, in 1977, the AP reported, "At present, the United States has only one Big Bird reconnaissance satellite at a time in orbit. If the Big Bird were to be destroyed by surprise attack, it might be months before the Air Force could replace it." It was also known by the likes of William Safire...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Well, by the late 70's, we had the ability to track a single bolt or nut orbiting in space, so tracking Big Bird and her "eggs" was pretty much mathematically precise:Well, not exactly ... we had capability earlier than that.
"[The] system ... known as the Naval Space Surveillance System (NAVSPASUR), which was commissioned as an operational command in 1961."
"The system concept of NAVSPASUR is that of a continuous wave (CW) multistatic radar. A high-powered transmitter generates a large fan beam of energy, commonly called the "fence," which reflects signals from an orbiting object back to separate receiving stations. These receiving stations use large arrays of antennas as an interferometer to determine the angle and angle rates of arrival from the reflected signals. By observing the target satellite from several stations, the position can be determined; using multiple penetrations, the orbit can be inferred. This rather simple concept led to a highly reliable system that could detect virtually any satellite coming within the transmitter's illuminated field."
What is that? A phased array radar site?
What they don’t tell you is that the Russians were doing this long before we were.
Now how did the Soviets know where it was going to land?
So I wonder how they knew where to be..?
Is that the one at Eglin AFB?
You have some non-Soviet documentation to support that?
Check my profile. PAVE PAWS at Cape Cod AFS, Mass.
No, this is the AN-FPS 115. The Eglin array is an AN-FP 85. The AN-FPS 115 was modeled from the earlier model Eglin phased array.
In fact, when we went operational in 1979 about half of the personnel came from Eglin.
I tend to be very skeptical regarding Cold War hi-tech claims relating to USSR. They were definitely masters of deception, not necessarily advanced technology. Some of the deception was fostered by our Mil to enable increasing budgets.
We made a map of countries visited before he passed away. My map (thanks to the military postings) covered about 15 countries. His map must have covered 50 countries, and he still wouldn't talk about his adventures. Secrecy was treated much differently back then.
What was the source selection team?
Thanks for the post very interesting I would still like to see them declassify Echelon.Doesn't exist; find a real telco or 'switch' engineer in your church or social group and ask about their 'Echelon Trunk' back to wherever (Langley?) ... doesn't exist.
Or ask them about the 'Echelon racks' in their local telephone central office (CO) 'switching' exchanges ... they don't exist. Never did.
They didn't exist in our MTSO (mobile telephone switching office) either ... none. No trunks, no 'Ecehelon racks'.
For some it still is. An open ended non-disclosure statement.
Ice Station Zebra
IIRC, that’s exactly how we recovered the first chimp we sent into space. (Able?)
A prop driven, Air Force plane either had a slingshot-shaped device on its nose or dragged a “U” shaped sling behind in order to snag the parachute shrouds in mid-air.
You may not remember but in the beginning the recordings did not self destruct, they required manual burning. I think the auto destruct came with Peter Graves. Tape recorders were rather large too. {:-)
Of course some of us remember wire recorders.
I wonder how many of today’s engineers could accomplish the same feats with the same equipment.
I’m not sure but I would guess either John Walker or perhaps Christopher Boyce. I’m pretty certain the Soviets learned how we did it with the classified information that Christopher gave them when he was working at TRW in Dominguez Hills, CA.
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