Mapping Imagery
Missions 1205 through 1216 carried a "mapping camera" (also known as a "frame camera") that used 9 inch film and had a moderately low resolution of initially 30 ft (9 m), which improved to 20 ft (6 m) on later missions (somewhat better than LANDSAT). Intended for mapmaking, photos this camera took cover essentially the entire Earth with at least some images between 1973 and 1980. Almost all the imagery from this camera, amounting to 29,000 images, each covering 3400 square km, was declassified in 2002 as a result of Executive order 12951, the same order which declassified CORONA, and copies of the films were transferred to the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation Systems office. Images from the mapping camera covering the state of Israel and all imagery from the KH-9's other cameras remain classified.
The KH-9 was never a backup project for the KH-10 Manned Orbital Laboratory. It was developed solely as a replacement for the Corona search system.
Read more about this topic: KH-9 Hexagon
Famous quotes containing the word imagery:
“Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human consciousness, modified and ordered by the stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming at a definite and concrete goal, generally suppresses everything inessential to its purpose; poetry, existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic object, aims only at completeness and perfection of form.”
—Richard Harter Fogle, U.S. critic, educator. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, ch. 1, University of North Carolina Press (1949)