This Day In Space - August 14


By KD Martin


KH-7 Imagery   ↔

August 14, 1964 - KH-7 10   The highly classified KH-7 reconnaissance (or spy) satellite is launched aboard an Atlas Booster from Vandenberg AFB.  Its target this day is still classified.

The project, code-named Gambit, used the KH-7 satellite to photograph targets of interest with a high-resolution Eastman-Kodak strip camera.  In this camera, the 9 inch wide film passed in front of the lens slit at precisely the velocity required to sync with the orbital velocity, thus taking wide area high res photos of the target.  The film was returned to Earth in a special recovery capsule built by Lockheed.

One drawback of the KH-7 series was its limited target offset capability.  If something interesting were taking place a few miles either side of its orbit, there was no provision to quickly move the satellite to this new target.

The above image is of the Pierrelatte Uranium Enrichment Facility in France taken by a KH-7.  The detail is astounding for the middle 1960s.  Imagine the imagery capabilities of today's spy satellites.  Who needs Google Earth streetview?

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Callisto   ↔

August 14, 1999 - Callisto Flyby   The Galileo spacecraft makes its 22nd flyby of this moon.  Callisto, about the same size as the planet Mercury, is the most distant of Jupiter's four large moons.  its surface of ice and rock is the most heavily cratered of any moon in the solar system, signifying that it is geologically "dead."

There is no clear evidence that Callisto has experienced the volcanic activity or tectonic shifting that have erased some or all of the impact craters on Jupiter's other three large moons.

The jagged hills in the new images appear to be icy material thrown outward from a large impact billions of years ago, or the highly eroded remains of a large impact structure.


Callisto full face  ↔

OK. If I lived on Callisto, I would certainly want to increase funding for the space program to detect asteroids and comets and to deflect those that are too close for comfort. Here on Earth, I'd like to increase spending to prevent the known and high probability disasters to come, e.g. climate change, overpopulation (Rwanda was our first Malthusian conflict), nuclear war, etc.

Just remember, back then the only way to capture images was on film.  And 9" wide film on a synched spool is pretty cool.  There were no CCDs, no way to deliver the images other than allowing them to re-enter the atmosphere on a super high tech re-entry capsule.  Lockheed-Martin's solution was pure genius in the 60s.  Out of 36 missions, 30 film capsules were successfully recovered.  Not a bad ratio.

Absolutely correct.  And of the 6 that were lost, some had some very sensitive information.  Best guess - re-entry failure and they burned up before hitting the troposphere.  At least they weren't captured by someone else.

What did you think of the res in the top photo, from a LEO satellite in 1964?  It blew me away, the level of detail that's there, and remember, that's just a scan of a photo and may be somewhat de-rezzed as some missions are still classified.

Sure is great we have an atmosphere.  Even so, the Earth is heavily cratered, too.  Erosion has erased almost every crater over the eons, but we still have the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, Tunguska, Meteor Crater, AZ, etc.