Discoverer 1 was the first of a series of satellites which were part of the

CORONA Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...

reconnaissance satellite A reconnaissance satellite or intelligence satellite (commonly, although unofficially, referred to as a spy satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications. Th ...

program. It was launched on a Thor-Agena A rocket on 28 February 1959 at 21:49:16 GMT from

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg Sp ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It was a prototype of the KH-1 satellite, but did not contain either a camera or a film capsule. It was the first satellite launched toward the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

in an attempt to achieved a

polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of about ...

, but was unsuccessful. A

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

report, later declassified, concluded that "Today, most people believe the Discoverer 1 landed somewhere near the South Pole". The DISCOVERER program was managed by the

Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

(ARPA) of the

U.S. Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

and the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

. The primary goal of the program was to develop a film-return photographic surveillance satellite to assess how rapidly the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

was producing

long-range bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, ...

s and

ballistic missiles A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within t ...

and where they were being deployed, and to take photos over the Sino-Soviet bloc to replace the

Lockheed U-2 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single- jet engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It provides d ...

spyplanes. It was part of the secret CORONA program which was also used to produce maps and charts for the Department of Defense and other U.S. government mapping programs. The goal of the program was not revealed to the public at the time; it was presented as a program to orbit large satellites to test satellite subsystems and investigate the communication and environmental aspects of placing humans in space, including carrying biological packages for return to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

from orbit. In all, 38 Discoverer satellites were launched by February 1962, although the satellite reconnaissance program continued until 1972 as the CORONA project. The program documents were declassified in 1995. Discoverer 1 was a test of the performance capabilities of the propulsion and guidance system of the booster and satellite. The launch took place from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Thor-Agena A. After first stage burnout at 28,529 km/h, the rocket coasted to an orbital altitude where the second stage guidance system-oriented the spacecraft by means of pneumatic

nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

jets. The second stage engine ignited when the correct attitude was achieved, putting the spacecraft into a polar orbit where it remained until re-entry on 17 March 1959. Discoverer 1 became the first man-made object ever put into a polar orbit. The difficulty was encountered receiving signals after launch, but the satellite broadcast intermittently later in the flight. In 1959, it was believed to have obtained orbit with speculation that the protective nose cone over the antennas was ejected just before the Agena fired and that the Agena then rammed into the nose cone, damaging the antennas.CIA.gov
- 1995, p. 16 Discoverer 1 was a 5.73 m long, 1.52 m diameter cylindrical Agena-A upper-stage capped by a conical nosecone. The satellite casing was made of magnesium. Most of the 18 kg payload, consisting of communication and telemetry equipment, was housed in the nosecone. It included a high-frequency low-power beacon transmitter for tracking and a radar beacon transmitter with a transponder to receive command signals and allow long-range radar tracking. Fifteen telemetry channels (10 continuous and 5 commuted) were used to relay roughly 100 aspects of spacecraft performance. Unlike future Discoverer flights, this one did not carry a camera or film capsule. The satellite launched atop a

Thor-Agena Thor-Agena was a series of orbital launch vehicles. The launch vehicles used the Douglas-built Thor first stage and the Lockheed-built Agena second stages. They are thus cousins of the more-famous Thor-Deltas, which founded the Delta rocke ...

rocket. The Thor used

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an app ...

and

RP-1 RP-1 (alternatively, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene outwardly similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel. RP-1 provides a lower specific impulse than liquid hydrogen (LH2), but is cheaper, is s ...

as propellants. The Agena used hypergolic fuels to boost the satellite into polar orbit. This combination of Thor and Agena would become the first booster rocket to send a payload to orbit using 2 stages. Five young men were in the launch crew of this historic mission placing the first spy satellite for the U.S. into polar orbit. The names of the young men, alphabetically, were James Boyle, Mark Jonah, John Lane, Jack Shields, the Test Conductor, and Erwin Warshawsky. Jack was 30 years of age. The others were all in their early to mid twenties. Just months before, in 1958 this same launch crew launched the first Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile from the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

. A couple of years later, Mr. Mark Jonah was an Assistant Test Conductor for the Titan 1 ICBM weapons program at Vandenberg AFB and in 1961, at 27 years of age, was promoted to Test Conductor for the Titan II ICBM weapons system at Vandenberg AFB. He was the youngest person in the U.S. weapons program to be given the responsibility to integrate all the ground support equipment, flight control, guidance, propellant and pressurization systems, launch control, and all other systems and launch a fully operational ballistic missile 5,000 miles down range to target.

References

External links

KH-1
at

Encyclopedia Astronautica The ''Encyclopedia Astronautica'' is a reference web site on space travel. A comprehensive catalog of vehicles, technology, astronauts, and flights, it includes information from most countries that have had an active rocket research program, f ...

* https://web.archive.org/web/20071003082210/http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/Programs/corona.html * Reconnaissance satellites of the United States Spacecraft launched in 1959 Spacecraft which reentered in 1959 {{US-spacecraft-stub

See also

References

External links