Corona (satellite)

Corona was the name of the first program of satellites spy of the the United States, used for the photographic monitoring of the Soviet Union, China and other countries of August 1960 in May 1972.

The first satellites were launched under the name of Discoverer . Thereafter they were famous KH-1 , KH-2 , KH-3 , KH-4 , KH-4A and KH-4B . KH for Keyhole (keyhole), and the increment indicates the changes in the instruments of monitoring, like the passage of the cameras of a simple panoramic format to a double panoramic format. The system of naming KH was used for the first time in 1962 with KH-4 and the precedents were named retrospectively. There were 144 launched Corona satellites, of which 102 turned over images usable.

The Corona satellites used 9,600 m special film of 70 mm with an optical focal distance of 0,6 Mr. Normalement in orbit between 165 and 460 km, the camera could take images with a resolution of 7,5 Mr. two systems KH-4 improved the resolution to 2,75 m and 1,8 m respectively and used a lower altitude.

The radio communications of the time not making it possible to recover the photographs taken by the satellites, the exposed film was turned over on Earth in capsules, called “buckets”, which were captured during the parachute drop by a plane especially equipped.

Corona was officially secret until in 1992. February 22nd 1995 the images acquired by Corona and two other programs (Argon and Lanyard) were déclassifiées.

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