The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a never-flown mission part of the United States Air Force’s human spaceflight programme. It was created in the Sixties, at the height of the Cold War, as the US and the Soviet Union battled for ultimate supremacy in both the Arms Race and the Space Race. MOL would become a single-use laboratory to replace satellite images, allowing onboard US astronauts to snap images of Soviet advances.

It was announced to the public on December 10, 1963, disguised as an inhabited platform as part of the next step to land the first man on the Moon, but astronauts selected for the programme were later told of their secret reconnaissance mission. Discovery Channel’s “NASA’s Unexplained Files” revealed how NASA special agent Dan Oakland and security manager Henry Butler accidentally exposed the project in December 2004 when exploring a remote corner of a launch complex at Cape Canaveral. National Security Analyst Tom Nichols said in 2016: “You might think that a NASA launch facility is perfectly organised, but there are miles and miles of corridors. “They finally found a way into this room and it was dark empty, full of rats.

The room revealed a secret space mission

The suit had 007 attached to it

The box contained two pristine space suits Tom Nichols

“But there was one box and it contains two pristine condition space suits. “They were similar to ones worn in the Sixties, but they were blue, which was not used in the US space programme. “They’re not from Mercury, they’re not from Gemini, and definitely not from Apollo and they only have two codes on them, 007 and 008.” The narrator explained how the identity of one of the NASA spies was obtained. He said: “The suit’s numbering also does not match with any known NASA programme. READ MORE: ISS live feed shock: NASA interrupted by space anomaly ‘on fire’ during stream

They were part of a plan to spy on the Soviet Union

“They come to the attention of journalist James Bamford, who suspects the suits are evidence of a secret space mission. “Suit 008 gives him a potential lead, he discovers it is Richard E. Lawyer, but he is not an astronaut, but an air force pilot. “Pentagon documents reveal to Bamford the true purpose of the mysterious suits. “Declassified documents reveal the first military space programme was a satellite project, codenamed Corona, designed to supersede U-2 spy planes.” The series went on to explain how MOL would benefit the US. DON'T MISS

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It added: “The programme used 144 satellites to spy on America’s, but despite initial success, Corona’s limited camera technology means it is ultimately viewed as a failure. “Bamford believes the suits were used in a programme that replaced Corona, called The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). “Like something from James Bond, MOL was an orbiting craft to deploy spies in space. “Spies on board the £3billion watchtower would intercept Soviet satellites and take high-resolution images of enemy installations. “The programme used one of NASA’s Gemini spacecraft to launch spies into orbit and rendezvous with MOL.”

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