[X] My Assistant

[Paolo]

in the Earth observations forum... or sort of, it must be noted that yesterday the NRO declassified the KH-7 and -8 GAMBIT and KH-9 HEXAGON high resolution photographic spy sats of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
here you can find some pics of the "rolling stock-sized" KH-9 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1568
and on the NRO sites you can find hundreds of declassified documents http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/GAMBHEX.html
unfortunately, all imagery from orbit seems to be redacted at this time

[Paolo]

NRO has just declassified its experimental 1960s QUILL imaging radar spy satellite
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/QUILL.html
see in particular the sample images in the QUILL Lecture Transcript and consider that they were taken 15 years before JPL's Seasat and 25 years before Magellan!

[rlorenz]

NRO has just declassified its experimental 1960s QUILL imaging radar spy satellite
...... consider that they were taken 15 years before JPL's Seasat and 25 years before Magellan!

Fascinating ! Don't forget there was radar sounding on Apollo 15 (which I think used similar curved mirrors to do the SAR processing optically), and radar scatterometry from orbit on Skylab. But QUILL predates those by almost a decade.

A quick look at the material (some rather redacted) suggests most UMSFers will be interested in the document 22,
the testing report by Goodyear, the radar instrument contractor
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/QUILL/22.%...-%20Testing.PDF

which has many example images. Unfortunately the reproduction quality is rather poor, but you can see that the radar worked pretty well...

[rlorenz]

a quick summary slide with example image

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