On May 1st 1960, as CIA pilot Gary Powers plummeted towards the Russian countryside at hundreds of miles per hour, desperately trying to activate the self-destruct mechanism on his crippled U-2 spy plane, he probably didn't realize he was about to change photographic history.
Minutes earlier, Powers had been flying serenely over the Soviet Union at 70,000 feet. His mission was to photograph Soviet nuclear missile sites, providing crucial intelligence to the United States. When he was several hundred kilometers over Soviet territory, however, surface to air missiles fired from a battery near Kosulino blew a wing off his plane and sent it into a fiery tailspin. Nearly severing his legs in the process, Powers bailed out and was taken prisoner hours later.
Powers' capture prompted a PR disaster of epic scale. His mission--and the US response--set back peace talks between the Soviet Union and the West and put the two nations on high alert.
A model of Powers' U-2 with detachable wings, used to demonstrate his crash for Congress /CIA via Gado
This presented a problem. The U-2 program let the US peak behind the Iron Curtain, keeping an eye on the Soviet nuclear program. Without this capability, the US had no idea whether its nuclear arsenal was competitive with the Soviets'. The only option for the US government was to assume--and assume they did--that the Soviets were building bombs by the thousands. Naturally, they began building their own nuclear stockpile to match.
The US needed a reality check. But flying more spy planes over the Soviet Union was no longer an option. Luckily, there was an alternative. Beginning in 1958, the US had been experimenting with a crazy idea; launch giant cameras into space, and use them to covertly spy on the Soviets. After Powers was shot down, the secret program--codenamed Corona--was fast-tracked.
Corona is now known as one of the most effective military espionage programs ever conceived. The idea was to launch a camera-equipped satellite into low earth orbit, fly it over Soviet territory, and get comprehensive pictures of every Soviet nuclear site, without the risk of more pilots in top-secret airplanes falling from the sky.
The Corona camera system /NRO via Gado
Photographically, the Corona satellites' tech specs were impressive. Each satellite would carry a five-foot-long Itek camera (later two, for stereo vision) featuring a 24 inch focal length and f/5 aperture. The cameras constantly rotated to avoid blurring as they flew over the earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour.
Corona, like Quentin Tarantino, would shoot on 70mm film. The specially-designed stock was manufactured by Kodak (who else?), and achieved a then-unprecedented 170 lines per mm, about 3 times the resolving power of other films used at the time. Each Corona satellite would carry between 8,000 and 32,000 feet of film. The film allowed objects as small at 20 feet (later three feet) to be seen. To focus the cameras, the CIA built a series of giant concrete Xs in the Arizona desert. They're still there today.
On paper, Corona was a great idea. In practice, launching cameras into space was easier said than done. The early Corona mission logs read like the swamp castle scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The first mission crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The second made it to space, but the satellite didn't work. The next ten spacecraft either blew up, flew into the ocean, or failed in other dramatic ways. On Mission 13, though, Corona finally made it into space and activated its camera.
Taking pictures, though, was only half the battle. Today, we're used to the idea of instantly downloading digital images from anywhere. When New Horizons flew past Pluto, the pictures were on CNN within hours. Remember that in 1960, though, the world was still largely analog. This meant that to get photos back from Corona, you had to literally drop them on the Earth. While traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. From space.
An Air Force plane captures a Corona photograph capsule in mid-air /NRO via Gado
Corona's film reels were stored in a special capsule, complete with a heat shield. When the satellite finished taking its photos, a signal from Earth prompted it to release the capsule, which re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, opened a parachute, and extended a long tether. A US Air Force plane would then fly up to the capsule, grab the tether, and reel it in. The pilots called it "catching a falling star. "
Unsurprisingly, this took several attempts to get right. An early capsule landed in a Venezuelan field, bewildering local farmers, who eventually returned it to the US. Later capsules included a message in eight languages promising a reward if the capsule was returned. For safety, the capsules also included a salt plug, which would disintegrate after a few days if the capsule landed in water, sinking the images and preventing them from drifting over to a hostile nation.
Confused Venezuelan farmers with a Corona capsule that crash landed in their field /NRO via Gado
On lucky Mission 13, though, everything went right. An Air Force plane commanded by Captain Harola Mitchell successfully captured Corona's capsule over the Pacific. Six days later (and less than six months after Powers' ill-fated flight), the film had been developed. The results were remarkable. In one mission, Corona imaged 1. 5 million square miles of Soviet territory. It revealed 64 new Soviet airfields and 26 missile sites. No one--not even the program's directors--expected the results. Corona satellites would go on to fly more than 130 missions, taking more than 800,000 photographs of the entire Soviet Union and much of the world.
My company, Gado Images, works with archives worldwide to help them digitize and share their visual history. When we first got our hands on some scans of (declassified) Corona photos, I expected them to look like they were shot from space by a primitive, largely untested, frequently explosive satellite. They don't. They're crisp, high-resolution, and a remarkable way to take a giant leap back in time. At least by the later missions, Corona was taking images which rival what you see today in Google Earth.
Corona image of Lower Manhattan, New York taken in 1968 /USGS via Gado
Corona image of Central Park in New York City, taken in 1968 /USGS via Gado
We're not the only ones to take notice. Because they capture a comprehensive picture of a much-less-developed world, Corona images are a boon to modern scientists. They're now being used to study everything from ancient habitation sites to Mesopotamian trading routes. University of Arkansas even has a Corona Atlas of the Middle East.
Perhaps the most important impact of the program, however, is in what it may have prevented. Corona revealed something surprising--the Soviets were not, in fact, building thousands of new bombs. By 1968, they had stopped installing new missile sites entirely.
Corona image of Central Park in New York City, taken in 1968 /USGS via Gado
New housing development off Highway 287 in suburban New Jersey /USGS via Gado
According to US President Lyndon Johnson, this knowledge alone justified the cost of not only Corona, but the entire US space program. In his words, "We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because [now] we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. "
The reality check from Corona shifted American nuclear policy towards gradual de-armament, and eventually helped to solidify a policy of non-proliferation which continues to this day. Because of Corona, America took a crucial step away from the brink of nuclear war. Corona is not only an example of stunning technical achievement; it's an example of photography's power to alter narratives, and ultimately change the course of history.
Thomas Smith is Co-Founder and CEO of Gado Images, a software and media company which uses innovative technologies to digitize and share the world’s visual history. The company works with archival collections to find unique, niche content and make it available to creatives worldwide.
Cover Image: The Corona camera system /NRO via Gado
(All images used with consent)
2016-10-19 03:00