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.
This is part of my Cold War aerial espionage series. Part 1 about the U-2 plane’s genesis is here. Part 2 about the political challenge of deciding to fly it is here. Part 3 focussing on the Gary Powers Incident is here.
Eyes in the Sky
The Second World War saw rocketry mature as a technology, namely with the V-2 program in Germany. In the immediate post-war years, both the United States and the Soviet Union imported V-2 scientists to harness the new knowledge. The United States managed to import some of the German program’s foremost minds, including Wernher von Braun, who brought literal train cars full of V-2 parts and plans stateside with him. American engineers were thus able to rebuild the V-2 while learning about the technology, and in 1946, a team at the White Sands Proving Ground launched one carrying a camera. That V-2 captured the first…
