KH-1 CORONA
Flight
Launches 0-38 were called Discoverer, with the first attempt on January 21, 1959 -- one year after program go-ahead. The flight was aborted by premature ignition of ullage rockets on Agena, after which President Eisenhower conferred with Richard M. Bissell personally. < 13 > Discoverer I, launched on February 28, established an orbit with an apogee of 605 miles and perigee of 99 miles. Though no capsule was carried, it was deemed a success, and constitutes Lockheed's first satellite in space.
Following its April 13 launching, Discoverer II ejected its capsule halfway around the earth from the planned recovery zone. At the time, Air Force Lt. Col. Charles "Moose" Mathison (who was not CORONA cleared), served as Vice Commander of the 6594 Test Wing which operated the control facilities for Air Force satellite programs. Mathison flew to the impact area on Norway's Spitzbergen Island to make a ground and air search. They only found tracks in the snow, indicating that the Soviets recovered the capsule. CORONA managers had little worry: the capsule carried mechanical mice, electronic devices to record biomedical data, part of the scientific cover program. Despite the failure to recover the capsule, the development of a working horizon tracking stabilitization system was an important proof of concept.
Discoverers III and IV, launched on June 3 and June 25, failed to reach orbit velocities because of inadequate Agena thrust. Eisenhower began asking the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan W. Dulles, for explanations. After Discoverers V and VI failed in August, flights were grounded for exhaustive tests which found technical weaknesses in the reentry subsystem being exposed to temperatures lower than for what it was designed, preventing the batteries from supplying power to the recovery beacon. Problems also existed with the capsule stability systems, telemetered information, tracking, and separation sequence. An independent report on September 8 urged the program be halted for further study, and led to conclusions that Lockheed had been overconfident and that the Agena and capsule section were not instrumented adequately. In response, Lockheed increased satellite battery output and instrumented the recovery capsule more elaborately.
The next two Discoverer flights, on November 7 and 20, experienced subsystem and camera malfunctions. After two months of corrective engineering, Discoverer IX and X suffered complications with the Thor booster on February 4 and February 19, 1960. Discoverer X went off course, and was destroyed during its climbout by the range safety officer at T+56 seconds, showering Vandenberg with debris.
By March, discussions resurfaced of canceling CORONA as discouragement grew. Air Force CORONA Program Director Col. Paul Worthman reminded people that problems were inevitable in a rushed and pioneering program. Bissell overturned the cancellation drive, deciding the activity should press on with renewed vigor.
On April 15, Discoverer XI went into orbit and the recovery system malfunctioned again, sending the capsule into a high re-entry trajectory. This was unfortunate, as it was the first perfect camera operation due to Eastman Kodak's change from acetate-base to polyester-base film. But the failure triggered a personal message from Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, to Lockheed, urging "extraordinary corrective actions" and the personal attention of top Lockheed management to the elimination of defects in the system. < 14 > Lockheed conducted further tests in environmental chambers plus diagnostic flights in which the capsule would be instrumented specifically for recovery system telemetry. Discoverer XII climbed very briefly from the launch pad on June 29, with an erratic horizon sensor causing a nose-down position during separation of the Agena from the Thor booster.
Two circumstances in mid-1960 made the situation more tense. President Eisenhower canceled U-2 operations following the May 1 U-2 shootdown, putting the onus on satellites for reconnaissance. The second was the approaching maiden flight of the Samos readout reconnaissance satellite, a system attractive to a growing chorus frustrated with complicated CORONA recovery attempts.
During this time, it was theorized that the hot-gas spin rockets on the recovery vehicle were not igniting simultaneously and, instead of spinning the capsule like a football in flight, were causing it to cartwheel and to enter unintended orbits, rather than return to earth. Lockheed designed a cold-gas spin-stabilized rocket system that was retrofitted into the vehicles. The use of these rockets was a major contributor to future NASA and military space capsule and object recovery.
Because of heavy pressure for success, the launching of Discoverer XIII on August 10 took on great importance. The satellite was inserted into orbit, with the recovery vehicle ejecting on revolution 17. Capsule separation, retrofire and reentry were nearly perfect, with the predicted impact point very close to plan. Communication confusion between the air recovery teams and heavy clouds caused the capsule to splash down in the sea, where it was retrieved by helicopter and deposited on the deck of the Haiti Victory recovery ship on August 12. "Capsule recovered undamaged," was the terse message across cryptographic lines to Washington, D.C. < 15 > The capsule was brought to Washington and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution with more publicity than Richard Bissel would have liked, due to Mathison's lack of CORONA clearance andunderstanding of the sensitive nature of the mission. The film and SCOTOP device (which measured radar exposure to determine if the Soviets were tracking the satellite) were removed when Mathison was otherwise occupied. < 19 >
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