But there were no public accolades for either CORONA or the NRO until much, much later.
It wasn't until eight years ago, in September 1992, that NRO's existence was officially admitted during the tenure of President George Bush. Declassification of the CORONA program came three years later, under President Clinton.
Before NRO was brought out of the closet, the running joke was that its acronym really stood for "Not Referred to Openly."
The early, pioneering years of space reconnaissance found presidents and top national security advisors peering at fuzzy images returned from satellites of intelligence targets, mostly bomber and missile forces within the former Soviet Union.
"They probably rank as one of the most important government agencies during the Cold War," said Dwayne Day, a Washington, D.C., researcher who has written extensively on satellite reconnaissance.
"Once NRO came on the scene, it helped to stabilize the U.S. during the Cold War. We didnt experience so many surprises anymore," Day said. "We turned an intelligence capability into a political asset."
But those start-up days of the spy satellite business were fraught with problems.
One wayward rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida didnt make it into orbit and booster fragments rained on Cuba, killing a cow.
The incident was quickly dubbed "the herd shot round the world," recalled Keith Hall, NRO's director.
"It was the first time that U.S. space capabilities had been used to make ground beef," he said.
But NROs first stable of once hush-hush satellite programs -- with code-names like CORONA, ARGON and LANYARD -- led to the still tight-lipped operations of more sophisticated and powerful systems known today by such names as Keyhole, Orion or Lacrosse.
Tug of war
Today, roughly 3,000 government employees are part of the NRO, which is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia. It is a confab of personnel from the Air Force, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other federal agencies.
While specific budget details are classified, NROs budget this year is thought to total more than $6 billion. Since it began four decades ago, analysts estimate that NRO may have spent up to $200 billion to design, build, launch and operate its family of spacecraft.
In one sense, NRO could be viewed as a high-tech, highly classified Apollo-like program for the U.S. intelligence community.
NROs Hall has said his organization has an overriding future goal to help ensure that the U.S. maintains "global information superiority."
"Information superiority means that our leaders will maintain the upper hand in decision making and negotiations, our troops will have a continued advantage on the battlefield, and our high-tech industries will enjoy a continued edge in the international marketplace," Hall said.
But the NRO also is embroiled in a tug of war, Day said.
"There is constant debate whether NRO should be fielding satellites to help the military and its troops fight their wars or to help CIA analysts determine whats happening next on the other side of the world. That debate is going to continue," he said.
"The one clear demand on NRO is to be everywhere, all the time," Day said.
Seek and hide
With the Cold War long over, has the need for intelligence gathering from space for national security purposes also diminished?
Former NRO director, Edward C. Aldridge Jr., now president of The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, said the NRO of today has more trouble spots and demands for its attention than it ever had in the past.
"We used to focus on one geographical area, the Soviet Union. That is where our priorities were. Those were the people who could hurt us the most," Aldridge said. "Now its the rest of the world. Weve got to have worldwide coverage in places we never anticipated."
In a world seemingly more open, more democratic and awash in internet browsers, high-speed information connections and high-flying commercial imaging satellites, some question the need to keep U.S.-gleaned intelligence information under wraps.
"It sends a very bad signal to the rest of the world. It says that we dont really mean what we say about freedom of information, transparency and openness," said Ann Florini, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.
"Foreign policy ought to be a matter of public discussion and public debate," she said.
"There is no reason for any kind of information to be channeled only to the government, especially when its freely available to the rest of the world. The U.S. is not the only operator of high-resolution satellites, and thats going to increasingly be the case," Florini said.
Who ya gonna call?
Indeed, civilian remote sensing has been held back by the NRO and its supporters over the years, said Ray Williamson, a research professor for the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
"If those billions had been put into civilian programs, we could be a lot farther along in solving problems like global environmental change," Williamson said. "I think the more our government operates in the open, as a general rule, the better off we are."
But that sort of openness can interfere with NRO's mission, Aldridge said.
Having NRO as visible as it is today has "put a huge inefficiency burden" on that agency, Aldridge said. "There is much more scrutiny and oversight. So the efficiency of NRO has gone down as a result. Thats probably a problem."
Even more critical, he said, is the fact that NRO has little contingency or management reserves left in the event that key satellites run into trouble or a booster fails on launch.
"Were budgeting NRO for 100-percent success...and thats not going to happen," Aldridge said.
Furthermore, the demands on keeping space eyes and ears on an increasing number of hot spots around the world is stretching NROs abilities, Aldridge said.
Can the NRO maintain its key mission as the nations 911 system -- on call, all the time -- ready to collect intelligence data from any part of the globe?
"Thats a number-one worry," Aldridge said.
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