KH-7 Gambit
BYEMAN codenamed GAMBIT, the KH-7 (Air Force Program 206) was a reconnaissance satellite used by the United States from July 1963 to June 1967.
Like the older CORONA system, it acquired imagery intelligence by taking photographs and returning the undeveloped film to earth.
[1] A high-resolution instrument, the KH-7 took detailed pictures of "hot spots" and most of its photographs are of Chinese and Soviet nuclear and missile installations, with smaller amounts of coverage of cities and harbors.
[13] In early 1964, the CIA toyed with the idea of using GAMBIT to photograph military installations in Cuba, but this was dismissed as unworkable as the satellites were primarily designed with higher-latitude Soviet territory in mind and because it would mean wasting an entire satellite on the Latin America-Caribbean area which had little else of interest to U.S. intelligence services.
[14][15] (NSSDC ID Numbers: See COSPAR) GAMBIT marked the first use of next-generation launch vehicle systems as Convair and Lockheed, the builders of the Atlas-Agena booster, began introducing improved, standardized launchers to replace the multitude of customized variants used up to 1963, which caused endless mix ups, poor reliability, and mission failures.
This followed a recommendation by the Lewis Spaceflight Center in Cleveland, Ohio that Atlas and Agena switch to one standard configuration for both NASA and Air Force launches, with uniform testing and checkout procedures, as well as improved materials and fabrication processes for the various hardware components in the boosters.
On 11 May 1963, the first GAMBIT satellite sat atop Atlas-Agena 190D on SLC-4W at Vandenberg Air Force Base awaiting launch.
There was no fire or explosion, but the Agena sustained minor damage and the satellite a considerable amount as the cameras were crushed in by impact with the ground and had their lenses destroyed.
Fortunately, the satellite on the booster was not the same one planned for the actual launch and the payload shroud had also remained in one piece, preventing any unauthorized parties from seeing the GAMBIT.
In late 1961, President John F. Kennedy ordered a veil of secrecy placed around the photoreconnaissance program and by GAMBIT's debut in 1963, DoD announcements described no details other than the launching of a "classified payload".
The Agena was sent back to Lockheed for repairs and a different Atlas (vehicle 201D) was used, and the first successful GAMBIT mission was launched on 12 July 1963.
The launch vehicle performed perfectly and inserted GAMBIT into polar orbit with a 189 km (117 mi) altitude.
Aerospace Corporation recommended that, during GAMBIT's first flights, the Orbital Control Vehicle (OCV) should remain attached to the Agena.
Once the successful photographic phase of the mission 4002 was completed, the OCV and the Agena were separated and the reentry vehicle would come down into the ocean northwest of Hawaii.
The re-entry vehicle was caught in mid-air with a C-130 Hercules aircraft using a modified version of the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system.
An investigation of the failure found that an electrical short occurred in an engine relay box, resulting in a cutoff signal being issued 0.4 seconds after ignition.
Examination of factory records for the Agena found that a pair of metal screws from a little-used terminal connector had broken off and disappeared to parts unknown; it was speculated that they landed somewhere as to cause a short.
Eventually, it was determined that the culprit was an extra structure added to the SLC-4W umbilical tower that sent resonant vibration through the Atlas-Agena stack at liftoff, jarring random components in the booster and/or spacecraft loose.
