America Spying with the Corona Satellites

After Gary Powers’s U-2 was downed on May 1, 1960, it became impossible for the United States to continue photographing the Soviet Union. But the need for Soviet intelligence didn’t change — it remained paramount to American national security to know what was happening beyond the Iron Curtain. Luckily for the United States, there was a new technology ready to take over the job of aerial reconnaissance within months of the Powers’ Incident: the Corona spy satellites.