*** Original Fairchild DISIC Camera lens - Military Corona Satellite Mission ***

Description

The item up for sale is one of 15 IKOGON lenses made by the Fairchild company for Corona - the first and original US spy satellite program.  The lens was designed for use on the DISIC camera, and is purported to have a resolution of 120 feet at 80 miles up.  The Corona missions set out to replace the U2 spy plane program, with the first satellites placed in orbit in the late 1950's.  This lens was part of the last wave of satellite orbiters, but was never sent into space.
As with the vast majority of IKOGON lenses, lens 104 was calibrated at f/4.5.  However, unlike previous lenses, it was equipped with a second iris which brought it down to F/24.  This, apparently, was done to solve a film flattening problem noted on previous missions - the designers increased the rear depth of field to avoid out-of-focus regions on the 4040 film stock.
Unfortunately, while this may have solved one problem, it created another - the lens became too slow to take clear shots from a rocket traveling at orbital speeds - and so the lens was sidelined.
Once the Corona missions were completed, several DISIC cameras were given to NASA for use on the Apollo missions.  Views of the moon's surface from the command modules were taken with these cameras.  The photos thus taken were distortion-free and high resolution.
The IKOGON lenses probably cost the US government several hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and as far as I've been able to ascertain, this is the only one of the series available anywhere.  If you are into cold-war memorabilia, this is for you.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, and best of all to all -