Dropping Giant Rolls of Film From Satellites to Spy from Space

By Allison Kubo More cold war science in case you enjoyed our last cold war science article: the atomic-powered-nuclear-weapon-silo-ice-sculpture. In 1958, the Central Intelligence Agency started project Corona, a top-secret mission to perform photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union. Of course, this is before digital cameras. Current digital cameras use charge-coupled devices (CCD) which an array of capacitors transfer the photons that hit them into electrical signals. Although the develop...