Around 45 nautical miles (83 kilometers) up, as atmospheric drag increased, the solar arrays peeled back, snapped at their struts, but remained attached to the spacecraft. Ground controllers sent a command to the KH-9 to turn around and fire its rocket engine to slow the spacecraft so that it reentered the atmosphere. The May 1973 test used an ARIS tracking ship, two ARIA aircraft with their big bulbous noses, and a land-based radar at Shemya, Alaska. Mission 1205 had been launched in March 1973 and was the first mapping mission. Its camera system and forward section were also considerably bulkier and heavier than the KH-8. The HEXAGON had a diameter twice that of the KH-8, and it was also longer. Instead of the long, slender KH-8, they used the bus-sized KH-9 HEXAGON. In May 1973 the NRO resumed the testing, this time renamed Vehicle Atmospheric Survivability Program, or VASP.
If a big piece of a KH-9 camera survived all the way to an impact in Siberia, the Russians could learn a lot about the top secret intelligence technology. The first group, involving four KH-8 GAMBIT satellites, presumably at the end of their missions, was conducted from February 1971 to April 1972 and known as the Vehicle Atmospheric Survivability Tests. The NRO-working with the Air Force-conducted a series of six reentry tests. (See “Black fire: de-orbiting spysats during the Cold War”, The Space Review, October 25, 2010.) Soon White House aides ordered the National Reconnaissance Office to determine just how much of its satellites would survive reentry. (See “Ike’s gambit: the KH-8 reconnaissance satellite”, The Space Review, January 12, 2009.) This apparently sent shock waves through the US intelligence community and all the way up to the White House. Sometime, probably in 1970, a high-resolution KH-8 GAMBIT reconnaissance satellite reentered the atmosphere and part of its payload was discovered in a farmer’s field in England. << page 1: going operational Burning HEXAGON The flight of the Big Bird (part 3) The origins, development, and operations of the KH-9 HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite Missions 1205 to 1216 carried a mapping camera and an additional reentry vehicle. The first spacecraft carried only four reentry vehicles at the front. Sanic The Hawtdawg: Da Movie: Da Game 2.1: Electric Boogaloo 2.Artist illustration of the KH-9 HEXAGON satellite.
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