The Soviet N-1 Rocket Cost The Soviet Union A Manned Moon Landing Program

N1 Satellite photo of an N1 rocket on its launch pad at Baikonur. The United States tracked the development of the Soviet lunar program primarily using reconnaissance satellites. (credit: via Harry Stranger) Big little rocket: The N1 Moon rocket and the cognitive dissonance of spy satellite photography by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 20, 2026 Throughout the 1960s, American reconnaissance satellites overflew the sprawling Soviet launch complex in Kazakhstan, photographing construction and equipment, looking for changes and new developments indicating new Soviet rocket and missile projects. The CIA designated the facility Tyuratam (sometimes Tyura-tam), but the Soviets called it Baikonur. In 1963, a CORONA reconnaissance satellite detected the first signs of a big new construction project, and it would become a key target for American intelligence collection for the remainder of the decade—and remain a bit of an enigma for decades longer. N1 Starting in 1963, the Soviet Union built two large pads for launching the N1. One of the pads was badly damaged in a 1969 launch explosion. (credit: via Harry Stranger) The first indication that something new and substantial was going on was the erection of dormitories for thousands of construction troops. This was followed by excavation activities and the creation of concrete production plants. Over time, satellites photographed massive excavations and the construction of a large building. It is easy to get carried away with the adjectives—huge, massive, large—but they all apply. It was clear that what the Soviets were building was a facility for a big rocket, possibly as big as NASA’s Saturn V. The CIA labeled this “Complex J” at Tyuratam, after labeling previous locations A thru I; Complex A was the original Sputnik launch pad. Intelligence analysts tried to be careful in drawing conclusions, but the most likely project was a Moon rocket to challenge the Apollo program. Eventually, the big rocket itself (actually an engineering test model) made an appearance, and satellites photographed that as well. The CIA labeled it “the J vehicle,” although it eventually got other designations. For nearly a decade, nearly all the information that the United States gathered about this project came from satellite photographs. There were possibly some interceptions of Soviet communications about the project. Maybe there was a human source that confirmed some information. But there is no indication in declassified CIA reports that the US intelligence community ever saw the rocket from the ground, or saw its component parts, or had a view inside the big assembly building. Satellites provided the bulk of the intelligence. N1 The Soviet Union launched four N1 rockets, all ending in failures. The rocket was massive, similar in size to the Saturn V. But the Soviet Union did not acknowledge it existed, and photos of the rocket taken from the ground did not start becoming available until the late 1980s. (credit: via Nick Stevens) Starting in the 1990s, many reconnaissance satellite photos of the launch complex have been declassified. Although the quality of the released photos has increased over the decades, the best satellite photos have still not been released. But we know what they were seeing from above. We also know that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies had become incredibly skilled by the 1970s with understanding construction timelines and technical capabilities of Soviet rocket programs. They did not get everything right—for a time the analysts suspected that the Soviets, like NASA, were using high-energy propellants—but they were still remarkably good. It was not until 1989 that the Soviet Union released the first grainy, low-quality photos of their rocket, which was designated the N1. But it has taken three decades for increasingly better photos of the N1 hardware to be released. Soviet-era secrecy has tremendous inertia. Every few years a few more photos appear. Recently, Yuri Shakhov released on Twitter high-res scans of an album prepared by design bureau TsKBEM in 1969. The album contained a couple of dozen photos of the first N1 engineering mockup, including photos of its stages and fairing inside the assembly building. Most of these have been released before, although not in good quality. Several of them are all new. N1 N1 N1 The N1 rocket was assembled within a large assembly building, and the CIA had no photos like this to assess its construction. To date, a few dozen photos of the ground assembly and operations have been released by Russian sources, but up to a hundred more remain classified. (credit: via Nick Stevens) Fordham University professor and space historian Asif Siddiqi first learned about the photos years ago. “A guy named Pavel Shubin originally found the album in the RGANTD archive in 2017 or 2018,” Siddiqi explained, “and he published a big-size booklet based on his scans. These include images of both the ground test article (1M1) and the first flight model (3L) launched in February 1969. But he didn't include all the scans and the remaining 3-4 pics have appeared in this burst last week.” The new release also includes better scans. “There were apparently two other full color albums produced of the N1,” Siddiqi says, “but those were not donated by Energia to the RGANTD archive and thus are still classified. Supposedly there are about a hundred more high quality color pictures of the N1 that are still classified, but people have seen them.” Looking at the reconnaissance satellite photos and then the ground-level photos taken by people who worked on the rocket is strange. It is a reminder that thousands of people built these big rockets, which never succeeded in reaching orbit, let alone reaching the Moon. Every day they welded parts, wired electronics, forged the steel, connected the components, and tested the systems. But they did it all in their own secrecy bubble. The Americans, who were desperate to know what was going on, could only look from hundreds of kilometers above, and make educated deductions about what was going on. They too did that in secrecy. But for both sides, the photos—from space and from the ground—remained locked away in secret. Like the old saying, “if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound?” secret projects from the past exist in a liminal world: neither real, nor unreal, until revealed. Special thanks to Nick Stevens for the color corrected versions of the photos. Visit his Substack. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

Commercial Space Station Developers Make Their Case To NASA

Vast Commercial space station developer Vast showed off its plans at the 41st Space Symposium while making the case there are sufficient markets for such stations. (credit: Space Symposium) Commercial space station developers make their business case to NASA by Jeff Foust Monday, April 20, 2026 The general mood of last week’s Space Symposium conference in Colorado Springs was one of celebration of Artemis 2. With splashdown happing the Friday before the conference started, NASA and others used the event to take a victory lap for the first crewed flight to the Moon in more than half a century. (Organizers also likely breathed a sigh of relief that the mission ended before the conference began, ensuring that top NASA officials, including administrator Jared Isaacman, could attend.) “The RFI said, ‘Show us your evidence,’” said Smith. “We put in 390 pages of independent analysis, research studies, data, contracts, those types of things.” That mood extended beyond NASA. Military leaders at the conference also played up the mission, highlighting their roles in supporting it. The same was true of officials from other space agencies. Walther Pelzer, head of the German Space Agency at DLR, noted he had met with NASA just before his appearance on stage to discuss the performance of the European-built service module, assembled in the German city of Bremen. “They underlined that it’s really working like a Swiss clock,” he said, then found a more appropriate comparison: “Or like a German automotive engine.” NASA had more to celebrate than Artemis 2. Space Symposium gave it an opportunity to restate its revised exploration plans, including a lunar base and nuclear propulsion (see “Igniting a new vision for NASA,” The Space Review, March 30, 2026). At the conference, Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, formally announced a new space nuclear power implementation plan, building up on NASA’s plans announced last month. Not everyone, though, was in a fully celebratory mood. While many came into the conference riding the high of Artemis 2, commercial space station developers showed up after just submitting a homework assignment: responses to a NASA request for information (RFI) that effectively asked them to justify there was a market for those stations. That RFI was tied to NASA’s proposed plans for changing the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations, or CLD, program, citing what agency officials believed was a lack of a commercial market for them. At the Ignition event last month, NASA proposed major changes to the CLD program, including commissioning a “core module” for the International Space Station that commercial modules could dock to. “The RFI said, ‘Show us your evidence,’” said Marshall Smith, CEO of Starlab Space, on a conference panel largely devoted to commercial stations. “We put in 390 pages of independent analysis, research studies, data, contracts, those types of things.” That evidence, he said, showed that there were commercial markets for its Starlab space station. Voyager Technologies, the company that owns the majority of the Starlab Space joint venture, announced last month that the commercial payload space on Starlab was “fully reserved” three years before the station’s launch. “We’re going to see that evolve as we move forward: sovereign nations wanting to fly their astronauts,” Cirtain said. “That is a market. There is revenue there.” Smith didn't discuss the evidence his company submitted in detail but noted the business case for the station was strong enough to attract investment: besides the support from the joint venture’s partners, such as Voyager, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and MDA Space, the company has been raising outside investment. “Private capital, private investment is very much on the page that there is a future here,” he said. He was on a panel that included CEOs of two other space station developers, who made similar arguments. Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space, noted his company already has knowledge about the market from the four private astronaut missions it has flown to date to the International Space Station. While it started off flying private citizens, it has shifted to so-called “sovereign astronauts,” or those representing national space agencies. “We’re going to see that evolve as we move forward: sovereign nations wanting to fly their astronauts, get them trained, get them prepared for a role in Artemis,” he said. “That is a market. There is revenue there.” Axiom is flying a fifth private astronaut mission (PAM) to the ISS in early 2027, but the other commercial space station companies are also getting involved. Vast won a NASA award in February for a mission later in 2027 and, moments before the Space Symposium panel took place, Voyager announced it had been selected by NASA for its own PAM to the ISS in 2028. “With three providers now selected for private missions, NASA is doing everything we can to send more astronauts to space and ignite the orbital economy,” NASA’s Isaacman said in a statement about the Voyager award. “Each new partner brings fresh capabilities that move us closer to a future with multiple commercially operated space stations and a vibrant, sustainable marketplace in low Earth orbit.” Vast is preparing not just for its ISS PAM mission but also building Haven-1, a single-module space station that will host several short-duration missions, giving the company experience to support its larger Haven-2 station it plans to offer to NASA for the CLD program. Haven-1 is, after some delays, scheduled to launch as soon as the first quarter of 2027. Like Axiom, Vast is focusing on sovereign astronauts for Haven-1 and its PAM flight. In an interview in the company’s large exhibit at the conference, Vast CEO Max Haot said the Haven-1 flights offered several advantages, including the “very different” aesthetics of that new station when compared to the ISS as well as the selling point of being among the first astronauts to go to a commercial station. Others, though, may prefer the ISS PAM flight. “There are government actors that want to choose the established, simpler decision,” he said. Haot agrees that there are markets for commercial space stations like Vast’s, but also understands why NASA argues there isn’t. The difference in opinion is what they consider markets. “What they were meaning when they said there’s no market, they were talking about tourism, in space manufacturing, media and entertainment and sponsorship,” he said. “To us, that’s the upside. That’s very uncertain. We agree that’s not here today.” The market that does exist, he said, is supporting astronauts from NASA and other Western ISS partners as well as other space agencies. “There's a very clear market, and the only change to that market would be if NASA withdraws itself from the market,” he said. Haot made the same case on the conference panel alongside Cirtain and Smith. He noted that NASA’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal released earlier this month, which includes outyear budget projections through 2031, included $1.5 billion for CLDs in 2031, reflecting a $1 billion transfer from ISS operations as the station is retired. “If CLDs have a low-cost commercial approach, we believe that not only can we be ready by 2030,” he said, “we also believe that we can be profitable on the current market.” In the interview, Haot said Vast’s business case closed if it received 40% to 60% of NASA CLD development funding and one six-month mission a year from the agency, along with a 30-day mission from other customers. “With that alone, and with zero dollars from in-space manufacturing, sponsorship, and tourism, Vast can be profitable,” he said, adding those funding projections suggested there is enough demand to support a second commercial station company At another event during Space Symposium, Cirtain said that Axiom provided feedback in the RFI on both continuing the current CLD plan as well as the alternative NASA proposed last month. “Frankly, both of them have positives relative to our concepts of operations that we’ve been architecting to all along,” he said. “If CLDs have a low-cost commercial approach, we believe that not only can we be ready by 2030,” Haot said, “we also believe that we can be profitable on the current market.” He urged NASA, though, to follow the model of the commercial cargo and crew programs in developing and supporting commercial capabilities. “The agency demonstrated courage in 2006 through the COTS program with commercial resupply and onward with commercial crew missions. They showed how they can sponsor the development of a market and the development of a capability,” he said. “I think they should stick with that.” Haot said that another flaw with NASA’s revised approach is the time and expense of building that core module. “We estimate it would take seven to ten years” to build, he said, pushing it out until years after the projected ISS retirement date. “And we definitely believe that the CLD budget is absolutely inadequate to achieve this because now the taxpayers will be paying 100% of it.” NASA’s plans have injected new uncertainty into the commercial space station market just as companies are scaling up work on their proposed stations. “Investors and our customers are calling us and saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’” said Starlab’s Smith. They are hopeful, though, that the RFI is just that: a request for information that NASA will use to assess a potential change, one that companies in the sector hope the agency ultimately rejects. “I think the RFI is a request for information. I don’t think it’s a definitive statement of a process, a plan, whatever,” Cirtain said. “I think the agency was saying, ‘Hey, what do you think about these various options?’ We’re giving them the feedback.” “We believe that logic and reason will prevail,” said Haot. “We’ll have a collaborative dialogue and that we’ll end up with something that we have confidence in and our investors have confidence in.” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Space Is Doing Most Of The Work In The Iranian War

Epic Fury attack While AI and drones have received most of the attention in the ongoing confict with Iraq, space capabilities have played a critical role. (credit: US Central Command) When the orbital layer is the kill chain AI and drones are getting all the credit. Space is doing most of the work. by Bharath Gopalaswamy Monday, April 20, 2026 In the weeks since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026, the public debate about artificial intelligence in warfare has focused almost entirely on Maven, on Palantir, on whether an AI model selected the targets struck in Minab, and on the legal and ethical implications of machines operating inside a kill chain. These are real and urgent questions. But they are the wrong questions if what you want to understand is what has fundamentally changed about the character of modern conflict and what is most at risk in the conflict that follows this one. This is the point that the AI-in-warfare debate consistently misses: the targeting cycle is not an AI system enabled by some satellites. It is a space architecture with an AI processing layer on top of it. The real story is not the software. It is the orbital layer that makes the software possible: the infrastructure that guides drones, feeds satellite imagery into targeting interfaces, synchronizes precision munitions, and times strike packages across multiple theaters simultaneously. That layer has been almost entirely absent from the public debate. Its absence matters because without understanding it you cannot understand what made Epic Fury possible, or what would unmake the next operation like it. Three clicks and an orbital architecture When Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's Chief Digital and AI Officer, demonstrated Maven publicly in March 2026, he described the targeting process with deliberate simplicity: left click, right click, left click, and a detection becomes a formal strike package. What the demonstration did not show was the chain of orbital infrastructure that makes those three clicks operationally meaningful. What surprised me was the speed and completeness with which the orbital and terrestrial layers fused into a single operational system with no meaningful seam between them. Maven does not see targets on its own. It processes what satellites show it, fusing drone feeds, satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and radar data into a single targeting interface. Every one of those data streams depends on orbital infrastructure: imaging satellites providing the visual picture, communications satellites carrying the data, signals intelligence satellites intercepting the electronic environment, and GPS timing and positioning synchronizing the entire architecture in real time. The artificial intelligence in Maven is genuinely impressive. It is entirely downstream of the space layer. Remove the satellites and Maven is processing nothing. The drones navigate blind and precision munitions revert to ballistic trajectories. This is the point that the AI-in-warfare debate consistently misses: the targeting cycle is not an AI system enabled by some satellites. It is a space architecture with an AI processing layer on top of it. The distinction matters enormously for how we think about both the capability and its vulnerabilities. What Epic Fury revealed that earlier conflicts did not I spent years researching the militarization of space, and the argument I made repeatedly in that work was that the most dangerous vulnerability in modern military power was not the dramatic one, not the kinetic antisatellite strike that generates headlines, but the quiet degradation of the orbital infrastructure that underpins nearly everything else. A jammer costs less than a used car and can deny a GPS signal that runs a multi-trillion-dollar global economy. What surprised me about Epic Fury was not that space proved decisive in the way I had long argued it would. What surprised me was the speed and completeness with which the orbital and terrestrial layers fused into a single operational system with no meaningful seam between them. In previous conflicts space enabled the fight. In Epic Fury the space layer and the AI systems it feeds operated as a single integrated architecture in which the sensor, the processor, and the weapon were not three separate capabilities coordinated by human analysts but a continuous cycle refreshing and executing at speeds that human deliberation cannot match. This compression is the genuinely new development. Understanding it requires placing the AI conversation inside the space conversation rather than treating them as parallel developments that happened to coincide. The Iranian lesson and the Chinese calculation Iran understood the centrality of the space layer before most Western analysts were prepared to acknowledge it publicly. Its transition from GPS to BeiDou was not improvised under pressure but a decade-long program rooted in a strategic calculation made after the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when Beijing concluded that dependence on American orbital infrastructure was not a vulnerability to be managed but an existential threat to be eliminated. By the time Operation Epic Fury began, Iran's military navigation was running on Chinese satellites, its precision strike capability depended on Chinese timing and positioning data, and the kill chain that struck American and allied assets across the Gulf was built on orbital infrastructure provided by a third party who bore no legal accountability for the strikes it enabled. China was not a passive observer. Beijing's Jilin-1 commercial satellite constellation documented strike patterns, aircraft deployments, and logistics cycles throughout the conflict, feeding a surveillance architecture that amplified Iranian targeting precision. The intelligence flowing from Chinese satellites to Iranian ground stations represents something the laws of armed conflict are entirely unequipped to address: great power proxy warfare conducted entirely through the space domain, with no Chinese soldiers, no Chinese aircraft, and no formal Chinese involvement that would trigger alliance obligations or escalation thresholds. The drones get the headlines. The AI gets the controversy. The satellites made both possible on both sides of the battlefield simultaneously. This is the model Beijing has now validated. It does not need to fight the next conflict directly to degrade American military effectiveness. It needs only to ensure that its adversaries have access to the orbital alternatives it has spent 20 years building. The contested orbital environment nobody has fought in yet The debate about AI in warfare has correctly focused on accountability and the laws of armed conflict. But there is a prior question that has been almost entirely absent from the conversation, and it is the more consequential one for the next decade of great power competition: what happens to AI-enabled warfare when the orbital layer it depends on is genuinely contested rather than merely disrupted at the margins? The United States currently enjoys a substantial advantage in military space assets, and that advantage is what enabled the targeting tempo of Epic Fury. But China has been closing that gap methodically. Its BeiDou constellation now covers the globe with military-grade precision. Its direct-ascent antisatellite capability is the most advanced outside the United States. Its co-orbital satellite program has demonstrated the ability to maneuver near, inspect, and theoretically disable American assets in geosynchronous orbit. And as the Iran conflict has demonstrated, China does not need to fight directly to benefit from the erosion of American space dominance. It simply needs to give its partners access to the alternatives it has built. Preserve the orbital layer and the AI retains its eyes. Lose it and the AI is processing stale data in an environment it can no longer see, with high confidence and zero situational awareness. The next conflict in which the orbital layer is genuinely contested—not jammed commercially but targeted kinetically, or denied through sustained electromagnetic warfare at scale—will look nothing like Epic Fury. The three-click kill chain that ran above Iran required specific orbital conditions: an imaging constellation that could see the target, a communications architecture that could carry the data, and a positioning system that could synchronize the weapon. Each of those conditions can be degraded. Each of those degradations is something China has invested seriously in being able to impose. The lesson being drawn in Beijing from Epic Fury is almost certainly not the lesson being drawn in Washington. What comes next The Iran conflict has validated three things simultaneously. Space is now the first domain of conflict rather than the enabling domain. AI targeting at operational scale is deployed and decisive. And the combination of these two capabilities has created a military architecture whose most significant vulnerabilities lie almost entirely in the space layer rather than in the software. The companies, governments, and militaries that understand this will invest in GPS-independent positioning, in resilient space architectures designed to survive active contest rather than merely passive disruption, and in intelligence pipelines that continue to function when the imaging satellite is blinded and the communications satellite is jammed. The AI is downstream of all of this. Preserve the orbital layer and the AI retains its eyes. Lose it and the AI is processing stale data in an environment it can no longer see, with high confidence and zero situational awareness. The kill chain that ran at three clicks per target over the skies of Iran will not always have the orbital conditions that made it possible. The adversary that figures out how to deny those conditions before the United States has built the resilience to survive their denial will win the next conflict regardless of how sophisticated the targeting software has become. The drones are the story that everyone is watching. The satellites are the story that will determine who wins the war that comes after this one. Bharath Gopalaswamy, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Mission Resilient Solutions and the author of Final Frontier: India and Space Security. He is an aerospace, defense, and emerging-technology executive with extensive experience leading growth, strategy, and advanced programs across the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

The Birds That Launched Spy Satellites

KENNAN launch Launch of the first KH-11 KENNEN electro-optical satellite in December 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This satellite established a new and revolutionary capability for the US intelligence community. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Who watches the birds? Cold War era launch vehicle photographs (part 2) by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 20, 2026 Starting in the late 1990s, an Australian space enthusiast by the name of Peter Hunter began collecting photographs of United States Thor, Delta, Atlas, and eventually Titan launches. Over many years of hard work, he produced a collection of high-resolution scans of as many launches and launch vehicles as possible, later providing copies to multiple museums and historians. HEXAGON launch HEXAGON launch The ninth HEXAGON mission, launched in October 1974. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) The value of Peter Hunter’s work was significant for writers of military missile and space history, because it enabled writers and publishers to be more varied in what they showed, rather than using the same officially-released publicity photos as every other publication, something that was common in space history books in the 1980s and later. HEXAGON launch The eleventh HEXAGON mission launched in December 1975. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Now, a new collection of launch photographs has closed some of the gaps. John Hilliard worked for the National Reconnaissance Office before he retired and began collecting rocket launch photos. His collection includes some of the missing photos in Peter Hunter’s collection. KENNAN launch KENNAN launch The first KH-11 KENNEN mission launched in December 1976. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Thanks to Hunter and Hilliard, we now have launch photos of many of the KH-9 HEXAGON and KH-11 reconnaissance satellites. HEXAGON was a large satellite that used film to scan vast areas of the Earth to detect new activities and count weapons systems. Twenty satellites were launched and HEXAGON operated from 1971 until the last mission ended in a dramatic launch explosion in 1986. KENNAN launch The second KENNEN mission launched in June 1978. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) The KH-11, code-named KENNEN, entered service in late 1976 and its descendants were launched into the 2000s. KENNEN was an electro-optical reconnaissance satellite that could relay images in near-real time to the ground, meaning that it could take a photo over downtown Moscow that within an hour or so could be seen by somebody at the Pentagon. The National Reconnaissance Office has declassified the name and the history leading to the decision to build the KENNEN, but not any technical information about the satellite itself. In 1985 one of the satellites failed to reach orbit when its Titan rocket malfunctioned. This was the beginning of a string of launch failures for the United States and a period during which American on-orbit reconnaissance assets were stretched thin. KENNAN launch The fifth KENNEN mission launched in November 1982. This was probably the first block 2 version of the satellite. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) At some point the satellite code name was changed to CRYSTAL. Independent observers have speculated that the second block of satellites began with the fifth launch and these included upgraded capabilities. But it is impossible to know how closely related satellites launched in the 1990s were to the ones launched two decades earlier. KENNAN launch The eighth KH-11 mission launched in October 1987. This launch restored American photo-reconnaissance capabilities after the 1985 launch failure of a KH-11 satellite. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Both the HEXAGON and the KENNEN initially used the Titan 34D launch vehicle with the same diameter shroud. By the 1990s, the Titan 34D was replaced with the Titan IV, which had a larger shroud to accommodate payloads designed for the shuttle bay. It is unknown if the versions of the KH-11 that used the Titan IV were also larger. KENNAN launch The ninth KH-11 mission launched in November 1988. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the first KH-11 launch and it is possible that some more information may be released to celebrate it. Or maybe we’ll have to keep waiting. In the meantime, look at the pretty launch photos. Special thanks to JB for help locating the photos. KENNAN launch The tenth KH-11 mission launched in November 1992. By this time the satellites had changed to the Titan IV rocket, with a much larger payload shroud. The shroud was capable of handling satellites designed for the space shuttle. It is unknown if the KH-11 descendants were also enlarged. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The eleventh KH-11 mission launched in December 1995. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The twelfth KH-11 mission launched in December 1996. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The fourteenth KH-11 mission launched in October 2005. It is unclear when the program was replaced, although there are indications that follow-on satellites may be even larger. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

The Curiosity Rover Has Discovered Serious and Creditable Evidence that Life Was Once Widespread on Mars and Still Exists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiFIa6_K0Lw

Is The Orville Season 4 Coming?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhfdakWP8sY

Apollo 8 and Artemis II Historical Parallels and Differences

Apollo 8 In December 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 flew a risky mission to orbit the Moon for the first time. Was the decision to fly this mission primarily because the LM was not ready and NASA did not want to lose time and momentum, or was it because the CIA concluded that the Soviet Union might attempt such a mission before NASA? (credit: NASA) Artemis 2, Apollo 8, and the problem with history by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 13, 2026 Last week, as the Artemis 2 crew looped around the Moon, taking spectacular photos and deftly handling media inquiries, numerous podcasts and news programs had on experts to explain why NASA was conducting this mission, and why it was pursuing the Artemis program to land people on the Moon. The answers were, of course, diverse. There were claims that NASA wants to find and use resources on the Moon like water ice and helium-3. There were statements that this was about competing with China. There were those who pointed out the pork-barrel politics aspects of the program. And, of course, there were the ones who claimed that this was about vision, about exploration, about boldly going where no one has gone before (at least since 1972, anyway.) None of these rationales was convincing, and all of them together are vaguely accurate but unsatisfying. What is lacking today is the clarity of the Cold War and the Apollo program. But even Apollo was a bit less clear than we think. The simple, and mostly correct, explanation as to why the United States sent astronauts to land on the Moon in 1969 was to beat the Soviet Union there and demonstrate American technological superiority after suffering several humiliating setbacks in the newly emerging field of space exploration. It was politically symbolic more than anything. The simple, and mostly correct, explanation as to why the United States sent astronauts to land on the Moon in 1969 was to beat the Soviet Union there. But had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963, it is possible that he might have backed out of his Apollo commitment, which was starting to become a financial—and thus political—liability. Kennedy’s death turned Apollo into a memorial, possibly giving it enough support to ensure its completion. There is no way to truly know, but there is enough evidence to raise that possibility. (See: “Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal,” part 1 and part 2, The Space Review, The Space Review, October 30, 2006.) The Artemis 2 mission has been compared to the December 1968 Apollo 8 mission. Whereas Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, Artemis 2 looped around it. But the Ingenuity spacecraft has greater capabilities than Apollo 8 did, including the ability to carry four astronauts amid greater comfort. Artemis 2 was really justified as an engineering test mission to prove the spacecraft, and the mission itself lacks a political impetus independent of the overall Artemis program, unlike Apollo 8. Politics and Apollo 8 Apollo 8 was a bold and risky decision by NASA officials to send them on that journey, the first ever beyond low Earth orbit. Over the decades, many historians have focused on the decision to send Apollo 8 around the Moon. The two major drivers were the availability of the Lunar Module—which had fallen behind schedule—and unmanned Soviet space missions that were clearly tests of their circumlunar spacecraft, called Zond. According to his autobiography, Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman in early August 1968 received orders to go to Houston immediately. “I flew a T-38 to Houston and walked into Deke’s office. I knew something was up when he asked me to close the door,” Borman wrote. “We just got word from the CIA that the Russians are planning a lunar fly-by before the end of the year,” Deke Slayton told him. “We want to change Apollo 8 from an earth orbital to a lunar orbital flight. I know that doesn’t give us much time, so I have to ask you: Do you want to do it or not?” Yes, Borman replied. “I found out later that the Soviets were a hell of a lot closer to a manned lunar mission than we would have liked. Only about a month after I talked to Slayton, the Russians sent an unmanned spacecraft, Zond 5, into lunar orbit and returned it safely to earth.” Borman’s account is dramatic, but not inaccurate. It’s also not the full story. But were Soviet actions the trigger for NASA’s decision to send Apollo 8 around the Moon? Other available historical evidence does not fully support that conclusion. In the 1960s the CIA, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies were closely monitoring the Soviet space program, trying to discern what they were doing. A declassified CIA memo from October 1968 reported on the activities of the CIA’s Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center, FMSAC, pronounced “foomsac” in the intelligence community at the time. FMSAC was established in late 1963 to give the CIA the ability to perform technical analyses of foreign—primarily Soviet—missiles and spacecraft. FMSAC became very good at trajectory analysis, taking radar and other data on the flights of foreign missiles and rockets collected from ground stations and determining the capabilities of those rockets and missiles based upon their flight path (see “Dancing in the pale moonlight: CIA monitoring of the Soviet manned lunar program,” The Space Review, June 10, 2019, and “Apollo’s shadow: the CIA and the Soviet space program during the Moon race,” May 13, 2019.) The declassified October 1968 CIA memo is a general account of FMSAC’s activities over the previous year. It stated: “In the space area, FMSAC has the exclusive lead over all elements of the intelligence community and on an almost daily basis provides direct intelligence support, including many personal briefings, to the senior officials of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Council and the Presidential Science Advisory Council.” Carl Duckett, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology wrote that among the Center’s accomplishments in 1968, “The likelihood that the U.S. will conduct a manned circumlunar flight with the Apollo-8 vehicle in December is a result of the direct intelligence support that FMSAC has provided to NASA on present and future Soviet plans in space.” But were Soviet actions the trigger for NASA’s decision to send Apollo 8 around the Moon? Other available historical evidence does not fully support that conclusion. Apollo 8 A Proton launch pad photographed by an American reconnaissance satellite in 1984. The Proton was the vehicle the Soviet Union planned to launch the Zond spacecraft around the Moon in 1968/69, and monitoring launch activities was key to understanding when they might do that. (credit: Haryr stranger) The spooks are watching The best and most comprehensive historical account of the Apollo 8 lunar decision is contained in Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox’s 1989 book Apollo: the Race to the Moon. Murray and Cox devoted ten pages to the subject. They clearly stated that the decision to send Apollo 8 on a circumlunar mission was overwhelmingly determined by Apollo’s aggressive schedule and not Cold War competition. In those ten pages they did not mention the Soviet lunar activities. Apollo officials started initial discussion of a circumlunar mission in spring 1968, primarily as a theoretical option, long before concern about the Soviet Union sending cosmonauts around the Moon. A circumlunar mission without a lunar module had first been mentioned a year earlier to make up time lost due to the Apollo 1 fire, so the basic concept for what became the Apollo 8 mission had been percolating for a while. The proposed mission was more seriously evaluated by NASA officials in early August when it became clear that the Lunar Module originally scheduled for the upcoming mission was delayed. George Low, the director of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, explained that the Lunar Module “had what we call ‘first ship problems.’ It always takes the first ship longer to get through.” The Lunar Module would not be ready until March 1969. To stay on schedule for testing both the Saturn V and the Command and Service Modules, NASA would have to launch a mission into high Earth orbit without the Lunar Module. George Low argued that in place of a high Earth orbit mission, NASA should instead fly a circumlunar mission. During several days in August, Low discussed this with various senior officials before taking it directly to NASA Administrator James Webb. Webb tentatively agreed to the plan but withheld final approval until after Apollo 7 flew in low Earth orbit in October and proved the Apollo spacecraft. It was a gutsy decision for NASA officials to make. None of the official NASA records on this subject, or George Low’s diary, mention Soviet plans to conduct a circumlunar flight. Low and other NASA officials were certainly aware of Soviet circumlunar efforts, but there are no official NASA records indicating that it was even considered in their decision-making. Although intelligence information on Soviet activities was classified at the time and would not have been mentioned in unclassified NASA records, the Soviet activities were also mentioned in public news sources, and therefore NASA officials could have at least referred to those accounts. Even if the CIA did provide extensive information to NASA about Soviet circumlunar plans, that does not necessarily mean that, as the memo indicates, NASA’s decision was a “result” of CIA information. The CIA and the National Security Agency had both been monitoring Soviet space activities throughout the year. In April 1968, the CIA produced a “Memorandum to Holders” supplement to an earlier 1967 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Soviet space program. Although the CIA was producing NIEs on the Soviet space program every two years, enough had happened in the past year that they wanted to update recipients of their 1967 report. The Memorandum to Holders included a table of space launches that mentioned the March 1968 Soviet Zond 4 mission, which it designated a “Circumlunar Simulation.” According to the memo, the mission was a “partial success,” which was explained in a footnote as “all phases of this mission appeared successful except reentry/recovery.” Zond 4’s mission had also been covered in the press at the time, so it certainly would have been well-known even to NASA officials without access to classified intelligence reports. George Low could have mentioned it in his unclassified diary. The April CIA memo also specifically addressed Soviet circumlunar plans: “The Soviets will probably attempt a manned circumlunar flight both as a preliminary to a manned lunar landing and as an attempt to lessen the psychological impact of the Apollo program. In NIE 11-1-67, we estimated that the Soviets would attempt such a mission in the first half of 1968 or the first half of 1969 (or even as early as late 1967 for an anniversary spectacular). The failure of the unmanned circumlunar test in November 1967 leads us now to estimate that a manned attempt is unlikely before the last half of 1968, with 1969 being more likely. The Soviets soon will probably attempt another unmanned circumlunar flight.” An accompanying bar chart made the same point, with the last six months of 1968 shaded as “earliest possible” for a manned circumlunar flight, and all of 1969 shaded as “more likely.” It is possible the CIA obtained new information after producing that April memo that led their experts to believe that a Soviet manned circumlunar flight was more likely in early 1969 or even late 1968 than they had assumed in April, increasing the pressure on NASA to do something. Perhaps in June or July the CIA somehow learned about the upcoming Zond 5 flight and informed NASA. The Zond 5 flight took place in September, after the Apollo 8 decision was essentially made. It is also possible that FMSAC was exaggerating its role in NASA’s circumlunar decision, or at least assuming that FMSAC had played a greater role in convincing NASA’s leadership to attempt the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon than it actually had. Without more details, it is still not possible to know. Even if the CIA did provide extensive information to NASA about Soviet circumlunar plans, that does not necessarily mean that, as the memo indicates, NASA’s decision was a “result” of CIA information. Only the NASA officials who made the Apollo 8 decision knew what factors influenced them most. That was primarily George Low, whose records point to the Apollo schedule being the primary influence. Apollo 8 Apollo 8 Apollo 8 Apollo 8 Apollo 8 The US intelligence community kept close tabs on the Soviet space program during the 1960s, including taking many reconnaissance photos of the sprawling launch complex for the N1 Moon rocket at Baikonur. Sometimes rockets were photographed on the launch pad. (credit: Haryr stranger) Photos and signals American intelligence assets focused on the Soviet Union were getting increasingly capable. CIA and NSA listening posts around the world were gathering up signals from Soviet spacecraft as well as monitoring the movements of ships used to track spacecraft and recover them from the water. Much of the information on this intelligence remains classified, although it is slowly coming out. (See “A taste of Armageddon (part 1),” The Space Review, January 3, 2017, and “A taste of Armageddon (part 2),” The Space Review, January 9, 2017.) We can be certain that the intelligence community is monitoring the Chinese lunar program, and providing their best assessments to NASA officials. In July 1966, the Air Force launched the first of the National Reconnaissance Office’s KH-8 GAMBIT-3 reconnaissance satellites, and by early November 1968, 17 of them had been launched, with one failing to reach orbit. The GAMBIT’s powerful camera could reveal amazing detail about Soviet submarines, missile silos, and rockets. GAMBIT’s photos revealed details on the ground 30 centimeters or better, and they could have shown spacecraft hardware being prepared at the Soviet launch site. But most Soviet activities were indoors and their rockets spent little time at the pad. It is unlikely that the CIA had good intelligence about an impending Soviet circumlunar flight until shortly before it occurred. Certainly the race to the Moon with the Soviets established the larger context in which all NASA decisions were made. The preponderance of evidence still supports the conclusion that it was the Apollo schedule that drove the decision, not specific Soviet actions. There are comparisons between Apollo and Artemis. We can be certain that the intelligence community is monitoring the Chinese lunar program, and providing their best assessments to NASA officials. But the Chinese have also been far more open about their plans than the Soviets were about theirs. It is a good bet that when they plan to send their own taikonauts to the Moon, they will tell the world. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitte