In support of The Commissions to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, this paper examines the potential damage to satellites from high altitude nuclear detonations not specifically targeting space assets. We provide and overview of representative classes of satellites, their orbits, and their economic and military importance to the U.S. lessons learned from atmospheric nuclear test of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s are presented. In particular, the STARFISH PRIME test of 1962 injected long-lived trapped energetic electrons into Earth’s magnetic fields, causing the early demise of several satellites.

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Collateral Damage to Satellites from an EMP Attack, August 2010 [165 Pages, 33.1MB]

The post Collateral Damage to Satellites from an EMP Attack, August 2010 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance [390 Pages]

A History of the Military Polar Orbiting Meteorological Satellite Program, September 2001 [56 Pages, 4.41MB] – In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, a director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) authorized the construction and launch of a small meteorological satellite to support CORONA and other film-limited imaging satellite systems. Though undertaken as an “interim” measure while awaiting completion and launch of a national weather satellite, in the months that followed the NRO spacecraft would incorporate so many desirable features and perform so admirably that it became the template adopted for all American civil and military low altitude meteorological satellites. I researched and wrote the first installment of this history, which covered these actions and events, using available classified records while assigned temporarily to NRO headquarters in the mid 1980s. After returning to the NRO as its historian in the late 1990s, and upon declassitlcation of the original work and endnotes in February 2000, I shared it with the early program participants and completed the story through the turn of the Millennium and the consolidation of American military and civil meteorological satellite programs into a National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).

Satellite Reconnaissance [24 Pages]

Utility of A Satellite Vehicle For Reconnaissance [140 Pages]

Venezula Capsule Crash, 1964. Mission 1005 [50 Pages]

The post Miscellaneous Records on Spy Satellites first appeared on The Black Vault.