to make full expansions to the ground-range scale, only partially expanded images were made during the processing of the original images. Data wasted due to secrecy The fact of combining SAR and an orbiting platform required giving the program both a very high-level security classification and very restricted access. That led to the later destruction of nearly all documentation before the program was declassified on 9 July 2012. Consequently, the surviving documentation is mostly limited to microfilm copies of the final reports, in which text material is well preserved but copies of images contain almost no intermediate tones and are therefore incomprehensible. A semi-exception is the above-mentioned orbit-16 image of a flood-driven debris field extending several miles out to sea. Although the surviving image is only a nearly two-toned feature, it does show the geometric form of that feature and its relation to nearby terrain features. Other exceptions are preserved photo prints of selected parts of three image strips. Digitally scanned copies of those prints are available in an NRO history document that is available on-line. However, those prints were at a scale that did not preserve either the fine along-track resolution or the coherence speckle effect that is observed in SAR images, both of which features were observable on the image films. In the absence of those films, all examples of Quill images having that resolution have been irretrievably lost. See also 1964 in spaceflight History of synthetic-aperture radar Lacrosse (satellite) External links National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Declassified Records - QUILL References 1964 in spaceflight Space synthetic aperture radar Reconnaissance satellites of the United States