The CIA's Secret Corona Spy Satellite Program
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2024
- On August 19th 1960 the CIA recovered the first images from a Spy Satellite as part of its secret Corona program. The Corona satellite flew from 1960 to 1972, providing important intelligence on the Soviet Union and other potential adversaries. The technology of the time forced the use of photographic film which would have to be recovered using a reentry capsule and a capture aircraft.
The program was declassified in the 1990's along with all the images, however the reports made from those images continue to be secret.
Lots more about the program is available in the CIA's archives:
www.cia.gov/news-information/... - Věda a technologie
My grandpa worked on this! He was the Kodak VP, Head of film. When it was declassified my gramps got to keep some of the photo negatives
mInE tOo
Sure.....all three of your gramps worked for the cia....riiiiight.
My grampa was the CIA. We aren't even USAricans
My uncle works for Nintendo.
my grandfather worked on something different. similar satellites, but he worked on the guidance systems. a lot of stuff still isn't declassified, some of the satellites he worked on in the 90s before he retired are still in use, but he did had some very interesting negatives in some old boxes i used to go through when i was a kid. those negatives were probably from the late 1970s and they looked like pictures taken from aircraft at close range.. but they were from a satellite. WAY better than the stuff showed in this video.
Other youtubers: Hey you can say Corona now without being instantly demonized. *Nervous laughter.
Scott: Let's test that...corona corona corona corona corona.
When you're 76 and a Covid elite it's no big deal. It just takes a couple of days in bed, some paracetamol, ibuprofen. and lots of sleep. When I had it, Feb 2020, it was just "the flu".
@Evilmike42 As long as it's a home brew IPA. Eighteen litres, bottled two weeks ago, just ready today, 4.5 ABV and very nice.
I live near the tiny town of Corunna Indiana which pronounced the same. It’s the home of a very popular butcher, visited by people as far away Fort Wayne and beyond
@@petermainwaringsx You probably had the actual flu. I know I did back in January. They went wide on the B-strain with last year's vaccine. 'Beats taking a clean hit from the A strain, though -- that thing'll knock a 20 year old down for a week.
Annoyingly though, you might be right that it *may* have been in central US before anyone knew it was. It's only a few data points, but I got hit by *some* thing in February myself. It wasn't the flu, as I'd already struck that down, and the strep test came back negative as well. Whatever it was hit like a truck for about 2 days while my immune system went General Sherman on it, *lingered* weirdly for nearly a week, and left behind a single-nostril sinus infection that took a run of amoxicillin to properly clean out. A few others I know had a similar experience around the same time.
Not enough data to say a thing, but with more evidence it would imply the virus was already here and quietly spreading -- there just wasn't much of it yet. Then the cruise ships attacked.
He has defeated the algorithm with his accent.
CIA, Corona, and space.
This is MASTERFUL conspiritard bait.
i came here just to like this comment because of the truth in it
yup, won't be long before some stupid flat earther takes scott's "thats when NASA brought corona back from space" quote and twists it to his own crazy narrative.
@@SpydersByte I thought Flat Earthers thought that space was fake. That'd mean that a Flat Earther would have to concede that space and space programs are real, in order for Corona to be brought back from it
@@weldonwin Well, we can't all be as intelligent as you weldonwin.
Unfortunately people mock anyone who believes in any conspiracy theory, when in fact there is truth behind quite a bit of them.
No i'm not talking about flat earth or lizard people, but real down to earth things like conspiracy to commit murder to protect pedophiles in high places. (epstein case)
Conspiracies regarding your health, like illegal drugtesting conducted in the us and canada.
There are in fact many theories that have turned out true, and calling someone a conspiritard just undermines your own case and makes you look ignorant.
@@StopaskingformynameCZcams My comment wasn't meant to mock, but was meant as a joke. Unfortunately, humor doesn't always carry over in text.
"The CIA brought Corona back from space."
This proves it. I knew Sasquatch wasn't lying when he told me so.
Is this Sasquatch the kind that wears a tinfoil hat and hangs out in alleyways, rooting through fastfood dumpsters and also claims to be President Kennedy who escaped the assassination attempt and is forming a resistance against the Lizard People?
weldonwin - The very same!
Bigger than anyone could ever imagine. President Kennedy likes 17. So do.
Bigger than anyone could ever imagine. President Kennedy likes 17. So do I.
Good news everyone!
This is the click baitiest, not click bait thing I have ever seen..
Should I just say a very Manley video
venture Bros flashbacks
Yeah because he actually teaches you stuff
How? The title matches the video content, it's not click bait in anyway shape or form.
@@Duncan23 were you not expecting some personnel covid tracker?
First thing I thought lol.
Btw never said it was click bait
I said quite the opposite ;) cheers!
@@Duncan23 Moron.
Nice title. Now Karens will share this video on Facebook without watching it and exclaiming it is proof of some conspiracy.
KARONA 😉
Soviet Luna 3 took photos of Far side of Luna using US made unused photographic film, recovered from US spy satellites or spy balloons. Soviets didn't have photographic film technology for extreme environments by then.
Vladimir Surdin actually told that in his lectures in Moscow University.
He was,
as a student of Moscow University, a apprentice of the people who built Luna-3.
Did you know the balloons which carried the cameras were made by General Mills?
How The Maker of Cheerios 'Helped' The Soviet Space Program czcams.com/video/YDs8rz7pRLQ/video.html
@@scottmanley Hahahaha! I thought I saw that "radiation-hardened film" story somewhere :-)
My grandpa did the image processing for some of these photos with the Defense Mapping Agency Aerospace Center. It's pretty cool to think of how many classified documents he was able to work with and saw before anyone else did. I believe they did some mapping for the moon as well! They came up with a system for defining points on a map specifically for landing strips, it kind of sounded like the very early start of GPS. I love seeing these videos and getting to know more about what he was a part of! Thank you Scott!
I also worked at DMAAC in 1979-1984. A fascinating time
I knew Corona was early, but I didn’t realize it was the very first spy sat programm at all!
USA! Gotta keep an eye on those dirty reds
T65Bx Corona has been a deep state program since the 1950s.
It wasn't really the first.
@@EFCasual You don't say?
Corona was the 1st photorecce s/C, but GRAB was earlier for RF.
Here in Arizona, between Phoenix and Tucson is Casa Grande, where you can still find huge concrete maltese crosses set into the ground at regular intervals that were used to calibrate the cameras on Corona satellites. Many of the crosses are gone now but if you know where to look, some remain.
If forgot about this, I was a 35G.
Thank you for this
Imagine having to spend the whole video saying “sun atmosphere” instead of corona.
It's not named after that though, corona is just Latin for crown.
Ive Harzing I know, I really wish we had a better name for the virus.
Those viruses are called coronaviruses because they look like Sun's corona. Sun's atmosphere is called a corona because it looks like a crown.
@@dionemoolman We had one. "Wuhan Virus". It was ruled by CNN to be racist.
Finally, a Corona video I can watch.
I also remember that these also had a "salt plug", which ensured that if it landed in the ocean it would sink after a certain amount of time - Allowing recovery efforts BUT preventing unauthorized folks from finding the return bucket / film package.
6:19 I couldn’t resist saying “enhance!”
boy that Thor booster nozzle and verniers jets were really oscillating after liftoff 😬
One vernier looked “dirtier” than the others, was that a real thing or just optics?
@@unmatort that might just be the exhaust and not a typical vernier, though exhaust were often used as verniers
Andy Saltis both LR-101s are burning clean; you might be referring to the exhaust coming off the preburner, that’s not used for vectoring at all it’s just dumped overboard...
yes, those were fascinating to watch. even see the the engine gimbal. I wonder if the engineers who designed that thing (control system) were biting their nails all the way into orbit as they knew all the places where things that could go wrong (I sure hope nobody makes a "sign" error).
Just like my creations in Kerbal Space Program...
Love the keyhole satellites!! Please make a video solely about KH-9 Hexagon!
id also love the KH-11 it has a interesting story with sts-1
yup,please,surely it involved very interesting related stuff around it.lets push this comment up.
I had a relative who was in the Air Force out in Hawaii and was a member of the Catch a Falling Star unit. He flew in the back of a cargo place with the back end open and a rig that caught the parachute of the Corona camera film pod. It was a top secret posting and we did not know about it until after he passed away in 2009.
My father worked on secret government projects for Kodak, including Oxcart and the Lunar Orbiter. When Corona was declassified and I mentioned a Popular Science article about it, his comment was, "You can't believe everything you read in Popular Science." Leading me to believe that he also worked on Corona, although I never specifically asked.
TLDR for conspiracy theorists that only came here for the title: "The CIA brought corona back from space in a bucket" (10:27)
PROJECT SCOOP!!! CORONA IS ANDROMEDA! WILDFIRE CONTAINMENT FAILURE! GAME OVER MAN! *GAME OVER!!!*
Pretty sure I already saw that on Facebook.
And they caught it with an aircraft so they could control the dissemination!
@@zkummer2359 🙈🤦🏻♂️😂😅
Man that timestamp is perfect- that made me laugh way harder than I should have!
Read "Insisting on the Impossible" a biography of Edwin Land, one of the greatest innovators second in patents only to Thomas Edison. He led the project that designed and built the Corona cameras. He also invented 'instant photography' for Polaroid after his daughter asked him one day why she can't see the picture he just took of her. A great inventor.
I love how interesting and at the same time informational these videos are
I was playing ksp and the sound of your launch startled me
I was in a VA hospital for a few weeks and made friends with a gentleman who described recovering these satellites. Said there was almost always a Soviet plane shadowing in hopes they didn’t successfully retrieve them
Everyone looked at the smaller side rocket jets moving left and right
Oh yes, vernier thrusters, still in use to this day, mainly on the R7/Soyuz Family of rockets.
Thanks Scott for doing this.
My father, who passed away last year at 98, was a part of the Corona and Agena projects from 1958 onward. I only know very little about it because of his Top Secret (and higher) clearances..
Great vid, Scott. Back in the day - '96 to be exact - when I first connected to the internet (using a browser called Super Mosaic and penny-a-minute dial-up!) the first thing I searched for was "satellite" and Corona was the best hit - amazing to see photographs from space taken in, I think, 1961 showing individual cars in the Pentagon carpark
They should have just used Google Earth, much simpler.
:)
lmao
And NOAA should just get its space imagery from the Weather Channel (yes, someone in government actually said something to that effect...)
pff just go look at it on MS flight sim, even better.
You realize that Google Earth uses "Keyhole Markup Language" or KML for its file format.
thanks for getting all your viewers on a watch list!!!
The Aral sea back when it was still pretty big!
You misspelled "Aral Desert" 😅
[ It isn't funny , but it's absurd so it's close enough ]😢
@@jonasfrito2 How to do dark humor:
-Take an awful thing to happen
-Exaggerate without measure so it loses it's horror and becomes grotesque
-If applicable, write some music that doesn't fit it at all
Not am exact quote, but pretty much the gist of something Georg Kreisler said.
yup I noticed that. " Hey, the Aral sea looks just like on my old school map!" It´s sad. No. Horrible, really.
Thank you for this presentation.
Great stuff, thank you for your video!
I think the two primary mirrors that were donated to NASA were supposedly not KH-11 related, but the leftovers from the failed Boeing program that was started in the 2000's to replace the KH-11. The program sputtered so they put two more KH-11s up with improvements.
That may be true.
I wish the Whitehouse would stop trying to defund this.
Terrific! Well done, Mr. Manley.
Nice topic Scott, well chosen!
Interesting posting Scott, I learned something today :) Thanks
Very interesting video Mr. Manley, thank you...
the space program has been had in hand with the spy's and the history is amazing, i relay hope you cover more!
Great show ! Camera technology has improved like crazy ! Today You can film a lightning strike with a consumer compact camera, it is amazing !
And who did click this video because the titel has corona ? What a clever guy this Manley is ! Publishing a video about corona satellites when corona is very popular for other reasons. 👍🏼🚀🌍✌🏻
I remember learning this years ago, but I'd kind of forgotten. Today, when you can buy digital cameras the size of shirt buttons from Amazon, and every phone, laptop, drone, and car has cameras built in, and people throw GoPros off of buildings and out of airplanes to make videos, it's mind boggling to think that during my lifetime, they used to use film in satellites and then drop it back to the ground to see what they got pictures of. Crazy.
When I hear bucket and corona used together, I think of a few bottles of Corona beer sitting in a pail of crushed ice on some tropical beach.
the orbital Fotomat with guys living aboard - that's just the coolest thing I've heard this week. That would be a hellova job to have.
There's an episode of NOVA about the MOL. Ep title is Astrospies. It's probably on YT or dailymotion, and it's definitely available on the seven seas
There's a conspiracy theory than communication satellites are actually manned by prison labour, because manual labour is cheaper than space-hardened automation.
(And that is obvioiusly true; I mean that's why NASA still sent astronauts to the moon when the Soviets already had robots.)
I recall reading in "The Space Shuttle Decision" (volume I of the Smithsonian's history of the program) that the Air Force planned to launch the Shuttle from Vandenberg as basically a manned Corona satellite. Polar orbit, cargo bay full of cameras, land at Edwards with a ton of film. This may have been the reason for the Shuttle's large cross-range maneuvering requirement, which in turn led to the big wings (rather than the stubbier wings of the original proposal) and control surfaces in hot plasma during re-entry. Of course, with the Shuttle's delays and overruns (and the problems with the Vandeberg Shuttle launch pad), and the development of the KH-11 with electronic cameras, the mission was never (to our knowledge) flown.
@@ExtroniusAttributes The USAF is to blame for what happened to the Columbia?
Great video Scott! You mention the Soviet Zenit satellites which did much the same job using modified Vostok capsules right through until the 1990s - any chance of a video about them? Assuming of course there's any information in the public domain out there.
Great public displays of this stuff at the Museum of the USAF near Dayton: Thor Agena LV; Agena OV; KH-9; etc. Awesome museum!
TY Mr Manley. Very interesting video, especially about the Agena spacecraft bus. Have a nice day ! :)
Wait a hatch in the heatshield ?
WFIRST was officially named after Nancy Grace Roman (The Mother of Hubble), so now it’s the Roman Space Telescope.
I always learn so much from this program.
Ah it’s a shame you used the old version for the Bluedog Design Bureau mod. The dev version has specialized corona parts that look amazing
Textbooks: “Satellites don’t have to worry about aerodynamics.
Corona satellites: “Well yes but actually no”
These disposable cameras must be very expensive lol
"this is the bucket the CIA used to bring Corona back from space". i see what you did there. :D
Have they got a bucket of space Budweiser?
Did they have a separate bucket to bring back the bowl of lime wedges?
@@redDL89 They brought Caipirinhas as well.
Bluedog Design Bureau has a whole suite of very high fidelity parts to recreate various Keyhole satellites in KSP, including the Agena and Thor variants they launched on. Really missed opportunity to showcase them here!
Hey Scott, come to Wright-Patterson AFB to check out a KH-1 Corona, KH-7 Gambit, and a KH-9 Hexagon satellite in person at the museum.
Well, you certainly did get my attention with that headline
Any news on KSP 2? It is great to see you still using KSP
There was some sketchy shit between publisher and developer. If i recall correctly, Take Two (publisher) cancelled the project and told the developers that they can continue working on it if they abandon their independent development studio and work for take two directly instead.
If you are really interested in this, google it. This information is what i remember from when it was in the news, so i probably remember something wrong.
My dear friend and client had a MAJOR role on this project and even wrote the documents about it which were released in 94 from the CIA archives.
He was an amazing man
A Hexagon went on displace for single day at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. It was essentially a flying photo lab in microgravity. Extraordinary technology. The display was in a special temporary building and government even had a handler there to not answer any questions and make sure people didn't get too familiar with the technology. He was very friendly though.
Would be really interesting to hear your thoughts on the ULA SpaceX contracts. A monthly news video would be so cool love hearing your take.
The program NOVA on PBS had an episode about the corona program. It was quite a feat of engineering for it's day. Eisenhower was apparently nervous (See U2, Francis Gary Powers) about being the first in space and wanted the Soviets to make the first move and set precedent. After that space was a free zone where you could spy on your adversary and not get shot down. Eisenhower was more interested in spying on the Soviets than being first in space.
I think this program, unless another PBS program, had other interesting things about Corona. There was concern about hydrazine leak between stages, one of the launch crew recalled about some guy who said he had a "calibrated nose" and would position him with a cherry picker crane to sniff for hydrazine between the stages.
What stood out for me with this NOVA program is Sputnik was a stunt but with Corona they had to develop serious navigation and orbital mechanics calcuation techniques. Much of this was a first. No sense in flying spy satellites if you don't know exactly where they are and what attitude. And just about everything else flying into space needs accurate position and attitude.
It was neat to work with & know some of the Corona crew when I worked at Itek Optical Systems in the 70s.
Great vid Scott. There's a declassified video on YT called "A Point in Time: The Corona Story."
I spy with my little eye, ice station Zebra and spy movie plots.
You mean 60 years ago they saw corona coming and said nothing about it?
Would it have mattered if we had? Would have probably been defunded by now.
@@scottmanley Oof cia cant come back from that
Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio has both Gambit and Hexagon satellites on display.
Yeah I saw it last year, next to a Titan IVB. The Hexagon satellite is so huge ! Next to it the Apollo capsule look like a tiny raft boat.
Corona camera had resolution equivalent to 238400 x 17400 pixels and it snapped a pair of such images every 2 seconds. Transmitting this volume of information electronically would not be trivial even today (equivalent to about 40 Gbit/s)!
The first time I heard anything specific about these programs was during a JPL Open House in (about) spring 1984.KH- x and 'Corona'. It was a huge revelation to me. I'm sure Scott you've had those moments where you immediately have the thought, "Are they supposed to be showing this stuff?" "Did someone make a mistake?" Prior to this I don't I ever heard any designation or program name. 'Everybody knew' we had satellites spying on the Soviets, and in high school in 1974 'everybody knew' we had spy satellites that could 'read a license plate' from space. The Landsat infrared images were the mostly widely distributed earth imagery from space (not snapped by an Astronaut). I still have the big book of images.
It isn't true that the government has satellites that can read a license plate from space, that's just a rumor that's been going around for decades. The current, still classified spy satellites are a few times bigger than Hubble and have a 2cm resolution. Smaller resolutions require increasingly huge telescopes.
Now we need a full-on MOL video. Bonus points if you re-dabble in Kerbal Space Program and use RP-1, it's actually awesome from what I've seen.
There's an nearly complete corona satellite at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
My uncles both worked on this project. One for NASA and one for the Air Force. They were extremely proud to have been a part of this.
That Thor-Agena seems like it's oscillating like crazy at 1:05. The exhausts from the vernier thrusters and the main engine are all rocking back and forth.
To balance a 50-some ton pole on a forefinger is hard
It was Corona in 1960 that revealed the real number of “missile gap” missiles the Soviets had. Estimates by the Air Force and CIA ranged from 500 to 50 - Corona showed all they had was four unarmed ones at the missile test center.
Don’t forget Hubble was made from spare parts from the KH program.
I helped launch Titan IIID rockets with Keyhole Hexagon KH 9 satellites at Vandenberg AFB in 1973 and 1974. The Hexagon Keyhole replaced the Corona but also had film buckets that they dropped. I worked near Point Arguelo
I see that Thor booster gimbaling like a mad man. It looks to me like a PD controller oscillation. Any info Scott?
Noticed the same thing and as I was watching that, my head started imagining Pac Man noises.
Yeah, it was wobbling all over the place. Thought we were going to see an incident.
Scott: "CIA's secret corona program."
CIA: "He knows."
No, Point Arguello contained the Atlas pads (SAMOS, KH-7). Designation PALC 1 thru 4. Built by Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks. I used to work with those original drawings. Today they are SLC-3 and SLC-4.
Corona launched from Vandenberg 75 area, today SLC-1, 2 and 10.
Didn't the return buckets have a sort of self destruct mechanism so if they stayed on the water for too long the film would sink or something?
Salt plugs with a lifespan of 2 days that would dissolve in the ocean letting saltwater in to destroy the film if left unrecovered for too long
edited to fix an error
Great Scott, that was a great video. I was kinda cringing when you were using those "demonetizing" Code Words. When I younger (and dumber), I would have been in a ton of trouble for talking about anything KH related. Fired, fined and maybe sent to Ft Leavenworth for a long vacation. Heck, we weren't even allowed to say "N.R.O" for many years.
Fascinating!!
It was named after the director's typewriter. I remember the manual typewriter's made by the company. Corona typewriters.
U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio has some of these on display.
You know, Scott, it's a pity only the engineering mockup of the MOL was launched because i'd love to have seen at least one manned flight of it. Interesting fact, Scott, one of the USAF astronauts trained for the MOL was Robert Crippen who was transferred to the Apollo programme after MOL was cancelled and then was one of the two pilots flying STS-1 (The other being John Young).
Thankss SScott...
I was so confused by that title like i thought it would be a satellite that would track cases or something Lmao
Well you should no longer call yourself 'rocket scientist' then.. :D
A KH-9 Hexagon was on display and Udvar Hazy for a very short time in 2011..
I completely forgot about how film got back to Earth. Today image data is sent via radio. In the old days, a capsule with film was jettisoned and had to survive re-entry back to Earth. That was tough enough, but they had to grab the film capsule now under parachute, while still in air by an aircraft. I heard from CIA that over 800,000 images were taken from 1960 - 1972. Big salute to all who made this a successful program.
When I saw the title I thought Scott was getting pulled into the dark and dubious conspiracy theory world!
My old college art teacher used to work with the film from these cameras. Interesting stuff
Corona Satellite, Corona Beer, Corona is crown in Spanish, Corona Cemetery.
Did that break the AI? 😂
Project Horizon, a 1950's plan for a military base on the moon. Sweet.
Yeah I covered this a bit on my video about guns in space.
@@scottmanley I'll check it out. Once read a short story about it in Asimov's years ago.
I could not think of a better and most appropriate name for the current revelation of a secret satellite!...
It just hit me that KSP is the B roll for where not B roll exists!
is that an undamped oscillation in that video of the Thor Agina, or is that in the film/film transfer?
I live near the corona crosses (corona satellite calibration targets). It's a bunch of concrete crosses out in the middle of the desert that they would use calibrate the size of objects.
could you please give the coordinates? - I'd like to see these crosses on google earth
Great video since i haven't watched it all
I love how Scott says Gambit, like its a meme and a dank one but also very cool and snazzy ... :D
1:00 Is the exhaust wobble due to insufficient chamber pressure, the steering system or the booster oscillating as a whole?
Booster oscillation, a Thor hallmark
the side ones are verniers thrusters that are used to steer the rocket so they wobble a lot as they try to steer the ship a long the correct trajectory
My neighbour worked on the weather balloon precursor to this where they developed the method for catching the falling capsules with an aircraft. It's the same concept as later used Project Skyhook featured in the Dark Knight and the Metal Gear Solid games.
In the 70's I saw what were supposedly Keyhole photos with a ground resolution near one meter. The equipment could actually do much better, but atmospheric distortion was a limiting factor. Resolution now is supposedly six INCHES as the distortion can be processed out.
And none of that is classified.
Have you seen the DARPA ACE (Air Combat Evolution) AI program that went 5-0 against an instructor? Might be an interesting thing to look at given your ai Kerbal fighters tournament.
My dad worked on Corona as an optical engineer for Kodak. I never knew about it until it was declassified. He was invited to a museum out in Ohio (I think it was) for the unveiling of an exhibit about this project. Truth is I only know a small fraction of what he did, because he has never talked about most of it for obvious reasons.
I think we all know Scott did this 'slightly' on purpose 😝
Another great video though!