KH-7 Gambit

Codenamed Gambit, the KH-7 (Air Force Program 206) was a reconnaissance satellite used by the United States from July 1963 to June 1967. Like the older Corona system, it acquired imagery intelligence by taking photographs and returning the undeveloped film to earth. It achieved a typical ground-resolution of 2 ft (0.61 m) to 3 ft (0.91 m). Though most of the imagery from the KH-7 satellites was declassified in 2002, details of the satellite program (and the satellite's construction) remained classified until 2011.

In its summary report following the conclusion of the program, the National Reconnaissance Office concluded that the Gambit project was considered highly successful in that it produced the first high resolution satellite photography, 69.4% of the images having a resolution under 3 ft. (0.91 m); its record of successful launches, orbits, and recoveries far surpassed the records of earlier systems; and it advanced the state of the art to the point where follow-on larger systems could be developed and flown successfully. The report also stated that Gambit had provided the intelligence community with the first high resolution satellite photography of denied areas, the intelligence value of which was considered "extremely high". In particular, its overall success stood in sharp contrast to the two first-generation photoreconnaissance programs, Corona, which suffered far too many malfunctions to achieve any consistent success, and Samos, which was essentially a complete failure with all satellites either being lost in launch mishaps or returning no usable imagery.

Gambit emerged in 1962 as an alternative to the less-than-successful Corona and the completely failed Samos, although Corona was not cancelled and in fact continued operating alongside the newer program into the early 1970s. While Corona used the Thor-Agena launch vehicle family, Gambit would be launched on Atlas-Agena, the booster used for Samos. After the improved KH-8 satellite was developed during 1965, operations shifted to the larger Titan IIIB launch vehicle.

Each Gambit 1 satellite was about 15 feet (4.5 m) long, 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, weighed about 1,154 pounds (523 kilograms), and carried about 3000 feet (914 meters) of film.

A feasibility study for the Geodetic Orbital Photographic Satellite System reveals three subsystems for US optical reconnaissance satellites in the 1960s: the Orbital (or Orbiting) Control Vehicle (OCV), the Data Collection Module (DCM), and the Recovery Section (RS). For the KH-7, the DCM is also called the Camera Optics Module (COM), and is integrated in the OCV, which has a length of 5.5 m (18 ft) and a diameter of 1.52 m (5 ft 0 in).

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