From: Allen Thomson (thomsona@flash.net) Subject: 1971 laser ASAT experiment Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.space.history Date: 2003-11-17 08:35:11 PST I have a declassified cable from one unidentified party to another equally unidentified party relating to a laser vulnerability experiment that was being considered using the CORONA Mission 1115. One assumes that the parties were in the CIA/USAF/NRO. The cable is dated 17 September 1971, during the flight, which was launched on 10 September and dropped two film buckets on September 18 and September 29. It's interesting that the document discusses not only a blinding experiment, but also looking at grosser physical effects such as heating and solar cell degradation after the second bucket had been dropped -- i.e., on or not much after after 29 September 1971. Obviously, there must have been a high-powered laser with associated beam director/tracking mount available for quick- response tasking. It is only identified as "the RML capability" Perhaps NML or HML -- my copy of the cable is in bad shape. If anyone is interested, I can email a scan of it.) Does anybody here know what the [RNH]ML capability might have been? Or, in general, what lasers/beam directors were around at the time that would have been able to cause significant heating and possible solar cell damage to a satellite? Laser blinding capability in 1971 wouldn't be surprising, but what else was around? (It's also interesting that the satellite carried solar cells. The basic CORONA ran on batteries, but Mission 1115 was a KH-4B/J-3 model, which was the last of the line and considerably bigger than earlier ones. It would be interesting to find out if the solar cells were used for main mission power or something else.) Here's an ASCIIized version of the cable; it's printed on a standard message form, which has the headers "CLASSIFIED MESSAGE", "SECRET" "(When Filled In)" and "REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED". It bears the declassification stamp Declassified and Released by the NRO In Accordance with E.O. 12958 on NOV 26 1997 --------------------------------------------------------------------- [REDACTED] SECRET 172158Z SEP 71 CITE [REDACTED] PRIORITY [REDACTED] INFO PRORITY [ REDACTED ] [REDACTED] CORONA SUBJ: LASER ILLUMINATED SATELLITE VEHICLE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT REF: PHONECON[ REDACTED ] 16 SEP 1. IT IS REQUESTED THAT YOU DEVELOP A PLAN FOR THE CONDUCT OF A LASER ILLUMINATED PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIENT UTILIZING THE R[HN?]ML CAPABILITY AND CORONA 1115 AS THE TARGET VEHICLE. YOUR PLANNING SHOULD ADDRESS THE APPROPRIATE ASPECTS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC OPERATIONS DURING THE ACTIVE PORTION OF MISSION 1115 WHEN THE PAYLOAD COULD DETECT THE ILLUMINATOR AND LATER PAGE 2 [REDACTED] SECRET OPERATIONS AFTER RV-2 RECOVERY WHEN HIGHER LEVELS OF ILLUMINATION MIGHT BE PRACTICAL. IN THIS LATTER PHASE, THE POTENTIAL FOR DETECTING DESTRUCTIVE ILLUMINATION EFFECTS (HEATING, SOLAR CELL DEGRADATION, ETC.) THROUGHT THE VEHICLE TELEMETRY SHOULD BE CONSIDERED. 2. REQUEST YOU ADVISE THIS OFFICE AS TO POTENTIAL SCHEDULES RISK, AND OTHER PERTINENT DATA WHICH WOULD AFFECT AN APPROVAL DECISION AS AVAILABLE. POINT OF CONTACT IS [REDACTED] OR [REDACTED] SECRET BT [PERHAPS DT]