The name of one of the earliest spy satellites.
They took pictures onto a reel, and, when they had expended all of their film, dropped it into the sea.
To prevent the Russians from finding these canisters, they were sealed with a salt plug that would disintegrate after a short time. At least one canister was lost when it fell off-target and the Navy couldn't get to it fast enough
The idea behind retrieval was that a helicopter would fly out to the dropped canister from a carrier and pick it up.
Later on a man in NASA figured that an airplane could intercept it in the parachute stage; this was more difficult but also made it even more ridiculously impossible for Russians to capture the canister.
When the guy who thought up the fast aircraft-retrieval idea tried to push it into use, the higher-ups weren't convinced the film would survive being catapulted forward as the airplane caught it ... So he latched himself into a harness and had an aircraft pick him up.
Fortunately for him, it really was safe, so he didn't die a horrible horrible death.
Technical Info
- Camera Type: 70mm for all variants of the Corona
- Focal Length(in): 24in for all variants
- Best Ground Resolution (apprx.): 25ft for KH1-4, 9ft for KH-4a, 6ft for KH-4b. (KH1-4 are kinda like build numbers, you understand. KH stands for KeyHole, the name of the project)