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Did You Know™ Spy satellites used to drop physical containers of film to Earth for pickup?

signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,182
Am I just a big baka for not having known this? Surprised I had never heard of this practice before. I suppose in retrospect it is kind of obvious that the film would have to be returned unless there were ways to process / transmit the data, but still kind of cool imo.

The 70mm film from the Corona satellites were dropped and then picked up by planes. [fultonrecovery.mp4]

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PallasAthens

PallasAthens

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Jul 11, 2018
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I learned that from the simpsons, that one episode where the baseball player grabbed film from the crashed satellite.
 
Magni

Magni

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Oct 27, 2017
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All I can think of is: how expensive was each picture? Divide the cost of the satellite by the amount of pictures taken, and then divide the cost of the recovery (what was it, 7 planes and 2 helicopters?) by the amount of pictures per bucket. Are we talking millions per individual photo? Wow.
 
OP
OP
signal

signal

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Oct 28, 2017
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UnluckyKate said:
Is this real or just a project? It seems incredibly impractical...
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No it really happened lol. The Corona and some series of the KH satellites did this. I don't know when digital imaging was introduced but sometime around the 1970s I guess.

PallasAthens said:
I learned that from the simpsons, that one episode where the baseball player grabbed film from the crashed satellite.
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Neptonic said:
yes because I played Black Ops 2 and they described the process in detail, super cool
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Simpsons and Black Ops 2 are pretty popular, how could I have missed it :think:
 
CassCade

CassCade

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Nov 2, 2017
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I did not know that.
Question, if they kept dropping off film, am sure at a certain point it would run out of film, how did they restock it?
 
Rassilon

Rassilon

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Oct 27, 2017
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Sounds like a good film premise.

Like 'Catch that Pigeon', bit with higher stakes in a Cold War / Noir setting.
 
Crispy75

Crispy75

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Oct 25, 2017
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How about this for wild? The pre-Apollo Lunar Orbiters (5 of em) took similar 70mm cameras to the Moon, and then developed the film in Lunar orbit, scanned it and transmitted the images in an analogue format back to Earth. Those photos are so detailed (1m per "pixel" for the whole of the Moon's surface) they are still useful to scientists today and just in the last 10 years have been digitally reconstructed from the original magnetic tapes.
 
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signal

signal

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Oct 28, 2017
40,182
Akira86 said:
hahaha that's hilarious and makes so much low tech sense.
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Yeah that's why I thought it was funny. Immediate reaction is to think this didn't happen but then it's like "well of course, what else would they do."

I guess I thought there was some interim way of transmitting the film data before digital sensors or something. Or maybe that the entire satellite would return with the film like a space U-2.
 
Senator Toadstool

Senator Toadstool

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Oct 25, 2017
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Magni said:
All I can think of is: how expensive was each picture? Divide the cost of the satellite by the amount of pictures taken, and then divide the cost of the recovery (what was it, 7 planes and 2 helicopters?) by the amount of pictures per bucket. Are we talking millions per individual photo? Wow.
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the program was a billion dollars or so.

They had miles of film.
 
BocoDragon

BocoDragon

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Oct 26, 2017
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I guess I thought it was like analog TV transmission and not literally film. I guess that didn't start until the 60s so maybe these film drops were necessary before that.
 
Crispy75

Crispy75

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PallasAthens said:
I imagine they didn't

aren't a lot of satellites orbiting earth essentially junk heaps now?
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A lot are, but none of the Corona satellites are among them. They flew in very low orbits in order to get the best photos, so have long since fallen back to earth (there's still a tiny bit of residual atmosphere to slow them down)
 
Senator Toadstool

Senator Toadstool

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Magni said:
A billion dollars or so from what l year? Eisenhower-era dollars? Reagan-era? Today ?
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total costs over I think the 10-15 years? 1959-70s? Still a pretty cheap program. Most expensive thing is the rocket launches. Remember during the cold war these plans were doing constant patrols so it's not like that added too much
 
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