Quill Declassified
 

Here is an interesting piece of space history.


Sorry NASA. Up until recently NASA's Seasat (1978) was the first acknowledged Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite. Well, the NRO beat NASA by almost 15 years. They just could not tell anyone about it. :03:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/QUILL.html

Details about project QUILL have recently been declassified and authorized for public release.

Project QUILL was a single satellite proof-of-concept experiment to determine the viability of using a SAR system in orbit. It was launched in late 1964 and was completely successful.

It only lasted 4 days and took around 14 images, but it worked. :yeah:

This is pretty impressive as only four years earlier (1960) the first optical photographic satellite system was successful. A lot can happen in four years.

Check out that website and read the QUILL lecture transcript first as it gives the best information.

Pretty interesting history. :up: