The originally scheduled Samos-2 launch date slipped from December into January 1961 as technicians checked and double-checked the booster and its complex satellite payload. Finally, on January 31, the countdown was underway. Shortly after noon the 99-fot-high Atlas/Agena took off. At 2:55 P.M. PST, the Air force announced that Samos-2 was in orbit. It was a good one, with a perigee of 295 miles, an apogee of 343 miles and an inclination of 95 degrees. Samos-2 was revolving around the earth once every 95 minutes.
If the Eastman Kodak camera was equipped with a 40-inch telephoto lens and used film with a resolution capability of 100 lines per millimeter, from an altitude of 300 miles it could provide ground resolution of better than 20 feet. This would have been adequate to spot the giant SS-6 Soviet ICBMs and their launch-site support facilities. If the lens had a 10-degree field of view, it could photograph 2,500 square miles (50x50 miles) in a single picture. On this basis, the entire 8.6 million square miles of the USSR could be photographed with fewer than 4,000 pictures, allowing a slight overlap between each. But since much of the Soviet Union is uninhabited and inaccessible to railroads or modern highways needed to transport the huge Russian ICBMs, perhaps only one-quarter of the country would have to be surveyed to locate missile launch sites. On this basis, no more than 1,000 satellite photos would be needed to inventory Soviet ICBM strength. Barely a month after Samos-2 went into orbit, its transmitters were turned off without official explanation. During this period, the satellite had made approximately 500 orbits, sufficient for it to have transmitted more than a thousand photos to several ground stations that had been drafted into service for this purpose. Several months would then be needed to analyze these hundreds of photos.
Four months later, in June 1961, the U.S. officially reduced its national intelligence estimates of the number of operational Soviet ICBMs by 50 percent! Instead of the 120 missiles that had been forecast to be operational by the summer of 1961, the figure was cut to only 60 missiles. (This was occurring as Khrushchev was confronting Kennedy with his Berlin ultimatum.) By September 1961, the official count of Soviet ICBMs would be slashed even more sharply, for there would be additional satellite photos.
Google Books — Loading...
(4.5)
Wikipedia in English (1)
1
Klass gives an outline of the U-2 efforts and their end with the Powers shoot down on 1 May 1960. He then segues into a discussion of the post 4 October 1957 missile efforts in the U.S. and the focus on closing the perceived “missile gap” which drove much of the late 1950’s/early 1960’s U.S. intelligence gathering efforts and led directly to an interest in developing reconnaissance satellites.
The remainder of the book is a detailed history of the development and deployment of the first, second, and third generation reconnaissance satellites. The chapter headings amount to a topic sentence outline of his presentation:
The Promise and Problems of Spaceborne Reconnaissance
Year of Frustration, Moment of Victory
The Telltale Satellite Photos (These first satellites used photographic film and periodically shot recoverable film capsules back into the Earth’s atmosphere where they deployed parachutes and were recovered in mid-air.)
The Missile Gap Turns on the USSR
The Soviet Reaction
Second Generation U.S, Reconnaissance Satellites
More Versatile Sensors for Spaceborne Reconnaissance (a discussion of thermal imaging)
Soviet Reconnaissance Satellites
Third-Generation U.S, Reconnaissance Satellites
Satellites for Early Warning
Nuclear Detection and Ferret Satellites
Firm Numbers Replace “Intelligence Estimates” (a discussion of how real pictures changed the nature of U.S. intelligence)
The Inherent Limitations of Spaceborne Reconnaissance
Fateful Decision, “Gilpatric’s Principle” and the Future (a discussion of the open skies issue and the consequences of trying to close them).
Even though the book was published in 1971 when photographic film was the currency for image acquisition and the world of digital images was in the future (Kodak’s researchers first demonstrated the technololgy in 1975) it is still a good read and the geopolitical issues it discusses are still a part of the political landscape. I think the book is an excellent history of the early efforts of satellite reconnaissance and the results of these efforts. (