CORONA'S
SUCCESSORS
In
1995 U.S. government officials ended the secrecy around Corona,
opening its history to view. Details of reconnaissance satellites
more recent than Corona remain officially secret, but some features
are known.
Today's
reconnaissance satellites are larger, comparable in size to the
Hubble Space Telescope. They no longer return buckets of film from
space. Instead, visual images are converted to digital data and
transmitted to Earth.
Corona
photo-analysts usually had to wait a week or more for photographs.
Today images from reconnaissance satellites can be received in a
matter of minutes, permitting almost instant analysis of a developing
threat.
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