Museum Artifact Discovered to be from Cold War
Satellite Surveillance Program
On occasion as we examined our parachute museum objects in storage we discovered a particular parachute canopy that is curiously drawn up tight and bunched in its storage container. So we asked ourselves why would we have a canopy that is not properly folded and stored diligently for preservation purposes (like it should be) in our collection system? On investigation what we have found out is that this bunched up canopy came from a secret program of the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology as a recovery parachute from a secret spy satellite from the program Corona used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic on China and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972. The parachute is bunched up and drawn tight because it was SNATCHED out of the air in flight as it descended by an aircraft for recovery of the top secret surveillance photography film. This back story is fascinating and you can get much more of it at Wikipedia at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)
