[FPSPACE] July 1969 N-1 explosion

[Charles P. Vick]

>Dear Philip,
>        Thanks for the credit. There was also an early US military weather
satellite that actually detected the flash of the N1-L3 explosion as I have
been told althgough it may have been some kind of other classified satellite. 

>>Charles P Vick said that this explosion had been detected by seismographs
>>in his early 1974 Spaceflight article about the "Soviet

        Perhaps a rechecking of the  seismographs information in the light
of the new records we have today is in order including checks right down to
the day and time in the US Europe and elsewhere uin trhe World for the July
1969 mission of 5L.

>>Thinking back to the first N-1 launch - this was never even rumoured in
>>the West until the Soviets announced it.   Was it simply a case of the
>>February cloud cover preventing photography of the launch site which would
>>have revealed the vehicle on the pad for a while and then gone suddenly ?

        I just finished reviewing that yesterday at the National Archives It
turns out that Corona mission-1106, 1, 2 camera's never did any imagery of
Baikonur at all. Most of that imagery of that Corona mission along with
other hoped for views I have reviewed have been revealed to have been grid
mapping imagery. That imagery was little better than Landsat imagery from
the 1970's. There is however some 400 plus cans of Corona imagery that
remain unaccounted for or that were withheld that may ultimately turm out to
mostly be this grid mapping imagery. The actual answer to this is unclear. I
have written this upo in a report I have developed as follows:
        The NARA and the EROS Data Center also have the problem of having
more than 400 missing rolls/cans of CORONA imagery that has not been
accounted for or turned over to them even though it was declassified by
Executive Order 12951. This is apparently due to the internal politics
within the Government on the CORONA declassification which was out of the
controlling hands of NARA and the EROS Data Center.

         What is really interesting is that it used the 70 mm Corona film
but also film larger than the normal 70 mm Corona imagery. This is the film
size I suspect was used with the higher resolution KH-7 and KH-8 Gambit
optics on those spacecraft.  It used  film 5 inches long and wide per
photograph that were 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches.  See Can A15,390 or F15,416 etc. 
        Apparently Gambit mission 57 did capture 3L  on the pad some time
before Feb 12 1969, but that is not yet declassified. I know this because of
a published report from 1969 on this in the NYtimes published some what
later. That is starting from February 5, 1969 on. 
        Not merely that inspite of the 1968  year long evidence of a flight
test build up NSA never reviewed the Search Tapes for SIGINT on this launch
even to this day.  It is also apparent that the Soviets used this launch
with a minimum of telemetery being transmitted as if it were operational.
Basically they were just trying to see if it would work at all. This is
apparently their normal practice with first flight test. So it could be that
NAS never detected anything on normal frequencies so was never alerted to
the attempt inspite of the imagery. 

All the best,
Charles P. Vick

_______________________
Charles P. Vick
Research Analyst
Federation of American Scientists
phone: (202) 675-1025
fax: (202) 675-1024
email: cpvick@fas.org
http://www.fas.org/