Author Description

Part of our comprehensive series on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and its "spy satellite" network, this volume covers the SAMOS satellite camera system and the incredible story of NASA's use of the camera in its highly successful Lunar Orbiter moon mapping program. The previously classified documents in this collection were released by the NRO in September 2011 as part of its 50th anniversary. In declassifying these fascinating documents, the NRO has opened the curtain to show the tremendous challenges that were overcome to achieve the impressive successes that help win the Cold War. Conceived in the mid-1950s, the novel SAMOS imaging system at that time represented cutting edge technology-a near real time analog film-readout satellite. The Eastman Kodak Company built the E-1 (preliminary) and E-2 (advanced) payloads. The E-1 featured a six-inch focal length lens in a camera that spooled a special two-component EKC Bimat (positive) film, and SO-243 (negative) film. The exposed negative film, converged with the gelatin-coated SO-111 Bimat film, was developed in a semi-dry chemical process, and then was scanned by a Columbia Broadcasting System flying spot line-scanner that consisted of a cathode-ray tube and a rotating anode having a high intensity spot of light. A photomultiplier converted the light passing from the scanner through the film into an electrical signal whose strength varied with the density of the emulsion layer of the film. The images were then radioed to Earth as frequency-modulated analog signals, to be assembled much in the manner of a wire photo, each image built up in swaths. Having acquired, launched, and then terminated work on a near real time imaging satellite, NRO officials at that time agreed to consign the SAMOS imaging system to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for use in its deep space exploration program. The surreptitious transfer of this technology, a fact just recently declassified, has remained unk