Thor-Agena

A Thor Agena, ready to launch the Discoverer 37 (KH-3) spacecraft, 13 January 1962

Thor-Agena was a series of orbital launch vehicles. The rockets used Thor first stages and Agena second stages. They are thus cousins of the more famous Thor-Deltas, which founded the Delta rocket family. The first attempted launch of a Thor-Agena was in January 1959. The first successful launch was on February 28, 1959, launching Discoverer-1.

Uses

Among other uses, the clandestine Corona program used Thor-Agenas from June 1959 until January 1968 to launch US military reconnaissance satellites operated by the CIA. During this program, Thor-Agena launch vehicles were used in 145 launch attempts[1] now known to have been part of satellite surveillance programs.

Also, Alouette 1, Canada's first satellite, was launched on a Thor-Agena-B.

Versions

Thor-Agena-A
Thor-Agena-B
Thor-Agena-D

References

  1. Day, Dwayne, John Logsdon, and Brian Latell. Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites. Smithsonian Institution Press (1998) pp 236-245
  2. "Discoverer 14 - NSSDC ID: 1960-010A". NASA.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, December 15, 2013. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.