> Between 1966 and ’67, five Lunar Orbiters snapped pictures onto 70mm film from about 30 miles above the moon. The satellites were sent mainly to scout potenti

> Between 1966 and ’67, five Lunar Orbiters snapped pictures onto 70mm film from about 30 miles above the moon. The satellites were sent mainly to scout potential landing sites for manned moon missions. Each satellite would point its dual lens Kodak camera at a target, snap a picture, then develop the photograph. High- and low-resolution photos were then scanned into strips called framelets using something akin to an old fax machine reader. Before they were doing this, spy satellites would hurl the data back to Earth in a capsule, then use a plane to try and pick it out of mid-air. You had to wear gloves when pulling it into the plane's cargo hold, the capsule would have been searingly hot. One time the recovery crew saw a Soviet submarine in the waves beneath them, from then on they stuck to radio transmissions only. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)