Launch Vehicle: Atlas
First Launch: 30 April 1976 (Whitecloud 1)
(Remaining data is still classified)

The Whitecloud spacecraft were a series of supersecret ocean-surveillance satellites used to monitor the movement of Soviet ships and submarines. Developed for the Naval Research Laboratory by Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin), they were placed in 700-mile-high orbits, where they released three smaller spacecraft that fanned out to cover a wider area. The spacecraft followed the movement of ships and submarines by tracking their radar and communications. The project was so secret that Naval Research Laboratory personnel were not even permitted to use the word in telephone conversations -- until souvenir postal covers with Vandenberg AFB postage cancellations showed up for sale at the tourist gift shop in the cafeteria at NASA's Johnson Space Center in October 1984.