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CORONA Historical De-classified Products

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Environmental Geoinformatics

Part of the book series: Environmental Science and Engineering ((ENVSCIENCE))

Abstract

The United States space programme included not only the open scientific program, but also classified satellites which were operated by the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agencies, and these induced the top-secret CORONA program [1]. CORONA operated from August 1960 to May 1972 and acquired photographic images covering nearly two billion square kilometres over a 12-year period [2]. The last flight of the secret CORONA missions took place on 24 May 1972 [3], but the images were not released and offered for public use until February 1995 [1]. This declassification of major U.S. satellite reconnaissance programs offered a significant source of imagery to the civil community such as environmental researchers, archaeologists, historians, and other users, with over 800,000 images having been taken from space for many parts of the Earth [2].

Invited Chapter by Dr. Ashty Saleem of School of Earth and Planetary Sciences (Spatial Sciences), Curtin University (Australia).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spatial Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia

    Joseph Awange

  2. Department of Geospatial and Space Technology, University of Nairobi , Nairobi, Kenya

    John Kiema

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  1. Joseph Awange
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  2. John Kiema
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Correspondence to Joseph Awange .

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Awange, J., Kiema, J. (2019). CORONA Historical De-classified Products. In: Environmental Geoinformatics. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03017-9_13

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