[4] There were 54 launch attempts of the 3,000 kilogram satellites, all from Vandenberg Air Force Base, on variants of the Titan III rocket.

The first one was satellite #5 on April 26, 1967, which fell into the Pacific Ocean after the Titan second stage developed low thrust.

As the film bucket lacked its protective heatshield or the parachute needed to slow its descent, no attempt was made to recover it.

At periapsis altitude of 75 nautical miles (139 km), the main camera imaged a 6.3 km wide ground swath on a 8.811 in (223.8 mm) wide moving portion of film through a small slit aperture, resulting in an image scale of 28 meter / millimeter.

The terrain frame camera takes exposures of Earth in direction of the vehicle roll position for attitude determination.

[4] Under optimal conditions GAMBIT would thus have been able to record ground features as small as 0.28 to 0.56 m (0.92 to 1.84 ft) using the Eastman Kodak Type 3404 film.

[10] The initial September 2011 release of "The Gambit Story" quotes "The mature system produced examples of imagery better than four inches ground-resolution distance".

The capability was developed to photograph Soviet spacecraft, but was first used to aid NASA engineers designing repairs for the damaged Skylab space station in 1973.