CORONA Program

The Corona, Argon, and Lanyard satellites were U.S. photographic surveillance satellites used from the late 50's through the early 70's. The satellites were designed to assess how rapidly the Soviet Union was producing long-range bombers and ballistic missiles and where they were being deployed. The programs' worldwide photographic coverage was also used to produce maps and charts for the Department of Defense and other U.S. government mapping programs.

The satellites used film canisters that were returned to earth in capsules (a.k.a. "buckets") for evaluation. These capsules were designed to be recovered by a specially equipped aircraft during parachute descent, but were also designed to float to permit recovery from the ocean. All film was black-and-white, with the exception of some small samples of infrared and color film carried on some missions as experiments.

The KH- (Key Hole) designation is used to refer to all photographic reconnaissance satellites. The number following the KH- designation indicates what type camera system was used on the satellite. This designation system came into use during 1962 with the 4th camera system, with its predecessors retroactively identified as KH-1, KH-2, and KH-3.

In 1995, President Clinton signed an Executive Order directing the declassification of intelligence imagery acquired by the Corona, Argon, and Lanyard missions. The order provides for the declassification of more than 860,000 images of the Earth's surface, collected between 1960 and 1972. These images are now publicly available.

Little information is available about the various satellite designs. However, some details about the various camera systems have been made available. Early systems (KH-1, KH-2, KH-3 and KH-6) carried a single panoramic camera, or a single frame camera (KH-5), while later systems (KH-4, KH-4A, and KH-4B) carried two panoramic cameras looking 30 degree apart (one looking forward, the other looking rear). The KH-6 camera was programmed to tilt between fore and aft to cover the same land area twice during a photographic pass and thus provide stereo coverage. Early systems operated with a single bucket, while later systems were configured with two buckets; the KH-4A was the first satellite with multiple film buckets. Additionally, the fore and aft camera's film was packaged separately for missions that carried twin panoramic cameras. Occasionally one of the pair of cameras malfunctioned or was programmed to halt, while its mate continued to operate.