My favorite part was the technology used to return the photos to earth:
Once a reel of film was finished, it was loaded into a re-entry pod and sent back to earth. "And then at around 50,000 feet, a parachute would slow it down, and a C-130 airplane caught it in midair over the Pacific," Pressel says.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141824562/spy-satellite-engine...
My favorite part was the technology used to return the photos to earth:
Once a reel of film was finished, it was loaded into a re-entry pod and sent back to earth. "And then at around 50,000 feet, a parachute would slow it down, and a C-130 airplane caught it in midair over the Pacific," Pressel says.