CORONA program (first American spy satellites): second launch (the first had failed a month earlier…), but the attitude control system fails and the rocket crashes. The third launch will successfully reach orbit, take pictures, and successfully launch the film into the atmosphere for recovery, but it will never be found… The fourth and fifth launches will never reach orbit, the sixth will, but the film will never be found, the seventh fails and re-enters orbit by mistake, the eighth and ninth explode on the launch pad, the tenth fails to enter orbit, the eleventh is lost by ground tracking stations, the twelfth collapses on the launch pad, the thirteenth works but the capsule is lost at sea, and FINALLY, Corona 14 (!) is a success: it takes photographs over 1.5 million square miles of the Soviet Union, covering 64 military airfields, 26 SAM launch pads, and the Plesetsk and Baikonur space launch sites. On August 18, 1960, while Gary Powers was hearing his sentence in Moscow, a Corona satellite was photographing Moscow overhead. On August 24, at 8:15 a.m., Eisenhower had the photos on his desk. The amount of information received in a single mission exceeded the sum of all the U-2 missions combined. Only at this point did the advantage of this technology become clear to everyone. A true game-changer.
