Veil of secrecy lifted on Kodak spy satellite work

[KanFotog]

Hello folks,

Came across this link on KenRockwell's site, thought of posting here...

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201109300500/NEWS01/109300348

Cheers,
Som

[Jerevan]

Pretty impressive - especially the trapeze-fitted aircraft picking up some 60 miles of film from outer space...

[hpulley]

Anyone know if 60 miles was the longest continuous run Kodak could do? What film? Aerochrome?

[Mike Wilde]

No one said continuous. It might have been fusion spliced, ala the way that double 8 was fusion spliced after processing.

I always wondered if this is where tech pan originated from. Why else would you need the extended red sensitivity , if not shooting through the blue haze of the atmosphere?

[hpulley]

Tech pan's high resolution would fit it well too but IR was good for camo detection etc.

[jp498]

A fascinating top, thanks for sharing. I've read with interest about the Corona project stuff for a long time.

Film details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-8_Gambit

Film recovery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Keyhole_capsule_recovery.jpg

[Mike Wilde]

I 'wasted' lunch hour reading a history on the declasifed pages collection of the NRO's site.

The original film was rated at ei 3.6, and 110 line per inch was I think the unit used. The later film, available in 68 was up to ei6 and 130 lpi.

I think the resolution was more important, because they were imaging from 90 miles up, with something like a 77 inch lens that was steerable.

There was a discussion that you could pick out a place kicker at a high school football game lining up for a kick , and then on the next pass of the bird, a bunch of players linedup for first downs.

[Ian Grant]

It's interesting how the informayion remained classified for so long because there were regular articles in the British Journal of Photography about the capabilities of satellite imaging. I think H.P.Arnold wrote many of them and they referred to both European and US technology, it has to be remembered that one of Kodaks main research facilities was at Harrow just north of London.

There was a time when the US relied totally on UK tracking stations particularly during early space flight.

Ian

[corposant]

Wow!

[Sirius Glass]

Notice the name of the newspaper. Rochester New York is the only place in the World where men regularly get a DNC! :eek: :eek:

[Newt_on_Swings]

very cool, thanks!

from the article, and the nice infograms on the wiki, it seems that they just tossed the camera body after the 60day period?

The links indicated that there were ~100 missions, thats a lot of tossed cameras lol! Would be so neat to find one in someones back yard.:laugh:

[JerryWo]

In astronomy a rough formula for computing resolution (usually taken as the ability to separate a pair of stars) is: resolution in arc-seconds = 4.57/aperture in inches. If I take the spacecraft height to be a minimum of 200 miles (that's probably the lowest), the resolution is .059 arc-seconds which equates to (if I did my math right) a resolution just under 4". It's hard to imagine this could be achieved looking through the earth's atmosphere....the same problem as astronomers have looking in the opposite direction. Nothing classified about that formula. The constant of 4.57, IIRC, has wavelength folded into it....yellow I think.

Jerry W
Warrenton, VA