CORONA SPY SATELLITE INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM CIA FILES

345 pages of CIA files covering CORONA, America's first satellite intelligence program. CORONA is the program name for a series of satellites with increasingly more accurate cameras, which provided coverage of the Soviet Union, China, and other areas from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, from the late 1950s until its retirement in 1972. Satellite imagery from Corona was used for a variety of analytical purposes from assessing military strength to estimating the size of grain production. While orbiting the earth, CORONA concentrated principally on photo-graphing the USSR and China.

This volume of documents presents the history of the CORONA program, provides a brief look at how the interdepartmental Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance formed to coordinate satellite collection, and gives an example of a nonmilitary use of satellite imagery. Files include a number of National Photographic Interpretation Center and other CIA reports on the analysis of CORONA imagery.