Piercing the Veil of Secrecy

PIERCING THE VEIL OF SECRECY

Photographs from the Corona missions enabled the United States to count the number of bombers and missiles in the Soviet arsenal and also alerted American experts to nuclear weapons tests and pending space launches. This is a 1960 Corona image of a Soviet launch complex, the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

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NARA#: 41, RG 263

ZENIT: THE SOVIET CORONA

By the time the first Corona successfully flew in August 1960, the Soviets were already designing their own spy satellite to fly over the United States. In April 1962, Zenit-2 ("Zenith"), a converted Vostok manned spacecraft carrying cameras instead of a cosmonaut, successfully returned film from space. As the United States did with Corona, the Soviet Union disguised the true purpose of the Zenit program. It claimed that the satellites were for scientific exploration and gave them the generic name Kosmos.

Courtesy of RSC Energia

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This color photograph of Washington, D.C., was taken by a Zenit satellite. Objects as small as 5 meters (16 1/2 feet) across can be distinguished.

Courtesy of Soyuzkarta

Zenit image of the Washington, D.C. area

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Downtown area

Zenit image of the Mall, Washington, D.C., enlarged

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Corona and the Cold War			Spies in Space
Space Race > Satellite Reconnaissance > Corona and the Cold War > 1-2 >> Treaty Verification