From: Allen Thomson (thomsona@flash.net)
Subject: 1971 laser ASAT experiment 
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.space.history
Date: 2003-11-17 08:35:11 PST 

I have a declassified cable from one unidentified party to another equally
unidentified party relating to a laser vulnerability experiment that was
being considered using the CORONA Mission 1115. One assumes that the parties
were in the CIA/USAF/NRO.

The cable is dated 17 September 1971, during the flight, which was launched
on 10 September and dropped two film buckets on September 18 and September 29. 

It's interesting that the document discusses not only a blinding experiment,
but also looking at grosser physical effects such as heating and solar cell
degradation after the second bucket had been dropped -- i.e., on or not much 
after after 29 September 1971.

Obviously, there must have been a high-powered laser with associated beam
director/tracking mount available for quick- response tasking. It is only
identified as "the RML capability" Perhaps NML or HML -- my copy of the
cable is in bad shape. If anyone is interested, I can email a scan of it.)

Does anybody here know what the [RNH]ML capability might have been? Or, in 
general, what lasers/beam directors were around at the time that would have 
been able to cause significant heating and possible solar cell damage to 
a satellite? Laser blinding capability in 1971 wouldn't be surprising, 
but what else was around?

(It's also interesting that the satellite carried solar cells. The basic 
CORONA ran on batteries, but Mission 1115 was a KH-4B/J-3 model, which 
was the last of the line and considerably bigger than earlier ones. It 
would be interesting to find out if the solar cells were used for main 
mission power or something else.)

Here's an ASCIIized version of the cable; it's printed on a standard 
message form, which has the headers "CLASSIFIED MESSAGE", "SECRET" 
"(When Filled In)" and "REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED". It bears the 
declassification stamp 

Declassified and Released by the NRO
In Accordance with E.O. 12958
on NOV 26 1997

---------------------------------------------------------------------

[REDACTED]

SECRET 172158Z SEP 71 CITE [REDACTED]

PRIORITY [REDACTED] INFO PRORITY [             REDACTED           ]

[REDACTED] CORONA

SUBJ: LASER ILLUMINATED SATELLITE VEHICLE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT

REF: PHONECON[         REDACTED         ]  16 SEP

1. IT IS REQUESTED THAT YOU DEVELOP A PLAN FOR THE CONDUCT OF
A LASER ILLUMINATED PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIENT UTILIZING THE R[HN?]ML 
CAPABILITY AND CORONA 1115 AS THE TARGET VEHICLE. YOUR PLANNING 
SHOULD ADDRESS THE APPROPRIATE ASPECTS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC OPERATIONS 
DURING THE ACTIVE PORTION OF MISSION 1115 WHEN THE PAYLOAD COULD 
DETECT THE ILLUMINATOR AND LATER

            
PAGE 2 [REDACTED] SECRET

OPERATIONS AFTER RV-2 RECOVERY WHEN HIGHER LEVELS OF ILLUMINATION 
MIGHT BE PRACTICAL. IN THIS LATTER PHASE, THE POTENTIAL FOR DETECTING 
DESTRUCTIVE ILLUMINATION EFFECTS (HEATING, SOLAR CELL DEGRADATION, 
ETC.) THROUGHT THE VEHICLE TELEMETRY SHOULD BE CONSIDERED.

2. REQUEST YOU ADVISE THIS OFFICE AS TO POTENTIAL SCHEDULES RISK, 
AND OTHER PERTINENT DATA WHICH WOULD AFFECT AN APPROVAL DECISION 
AS AVAILABLE. POINT OF CONTACT IS [REDACTED] OR [REDACTED]

SECRET

BT [PERHAPS DT]