The men at the tail end removed the base cap to study the engine area. Happily, word came back the pictures were perfectly clear.
Declassified cia papers crack full#
They took a full roll of film of the marks on the spacecraft’s antenna and sent it out for processing the make sure the cameras were working. They descended in socks by rope ladders and started dismantling the Lunik by flashlight. So they divided and conquered, two men working on the nose and two on the tail end.
With the roof removed, the men saw that the Lunik took up almost the full space of the crate they wouldn’t be able to walk from one end to the other. The agents gleaned what they could in 24 hours but desperately wanted a better look. These suspicions were confirmed when CIA intelligence agents managed to gain unrestricted access to the spacecraft one night after the exhibit closed. At first blush, many in the CIA assumed the touring Lunik was just a model, but some analysts suspected that the Soviets might be sufficiently proud of the spacecraft to bring a real one on the tour.
Declassified cia papers crack windows#
Among the artifacts were a Sputnik and a Lunik upper stage that contained the payload, the latter freshly painted with viewing windows cut into the nose. Sometime between the end of 19, the Soviet Union toured several countries with an exhibit of its industrial and economic achievements. The Moon from Luna 3 NASA/Soviet space agency And nothing was a more daring or imaginative intelligence effort than the decision to kidnap a Lunik upper stage to really understand this spacecraft.
But all this was only part of the puzzle, and because each mission was different, each was like a “fresh flare in the sky” that demanded a new and often imaginative effort to learn what was really going on. Taking as complete a data set as possible about the spacecraft’s peak altitude, target body, and rocket stage landing site at the end of mission to extrapolate data about the size and power of the boosters launching these space missions. Post-flight analysis was another important element of this intelligence program. US agents had to anticipate launches to be ready on time, and they were then forced to sift through telemetry without knowing the values of data assigned to channels or baseline measurements. Namely electronic intelligence, tracking the telemetry and intercepting data downlinks to gain a complete understanding of Soviet missions.
This intelligence effort focused on what was available from afar.