Corona surveillance mission anniversary

There's an article out about the 50th anniversary of the first Corona military reconnaisance satellite, which was a critical part of the Cold War intelligence establishment. For me, the most fascinating aspect of Corona was the film capsule recovery -- the re-entering film capsule would pop it's parachute, and then a U.S. Air Force plane would snag the re-entering capsule and parachute, to allow recovery of the film and surveillance pictures. There are a couple of pictures of the Corona recovery process out now, so I'm showing both here.






























It was a pretty remarkable accomplishment in the still-early days of the Space Age.

First Corona remote sensing satellite marks 50-year anniversary