the missile began tumbling in all three axes at T+77 seconds before breaking up at the forward end of the LOX tank. Agena T/M also registered the loss of control. The cause of the failure was not substantiated until study of liftoff film found that a heat shield designed to protect the booster hydraulic rise-off disconnect had broken off at launch. With no thermal protection from the engine exhaust, the rise-off disconnect ruptured at T+64 seconds and allowed the hydraulic fluid for the booster engines to escape. After 13 seconds, the hydraulic system was depleted of fluid and booster gimbal control was lost. Another, unrelated malfunction had occurred when the tracking beacon for the Mod II-A guidance system failed. Had the flight continued to sustainer phase, it would be impossible to transmit guidance commands to the booster and likely result in an improper orbit and failure of the mission. MIDAS 7 was orbited successfully on May 9, 1963 and detected ten different US ICBM tests in its six-week mission, making the first successful detection of a missile launch from space. Then MIDAS 8 (June 12) repeated the same failure as MIDAS 6. Once again, the rise-off heat shield failed at liftoff, the Atlas's booster engine hydraulic fluid escaped, and the launch vehicle became unstable and self-destructed at T+93 seconds. A rise-off malfunction had also caused the failure of an Atlas D ICBM test flight in March 1963, and after three occurrences of this failure mode in six months, the rise-off heat shield was redesigned. As part of the redesign effort, GD/A also added check valves to the hydraulic system on Atlas space launchers, although not missiles. One month after MIDAS 8, the last in the original MIDAS series, MIDAS 9, was launched successfully. Midas 10-12 were launched during five months in mid-1966, after which the program was officially ended and gave way to its successor, the Defense Support Program. MIDAS and its successors were declassified in 1998. MIDAS was at best a qualified success since like many early space programs, it was overly ambitious and had goals beyond the capabilities of contemporary technology. Problems included mistaking sunlight reflected from clouds as an enemy missile launch. The W-17 infrared sensor proved unable to detect the initial heat plume of a missile through the Earth's atmosphere, and only with the introduction of the W-37 sensor was a launch detected from orbit. Even