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Post Info TOPIC: Discoverer 2 satellite


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Discoverer 2 satellite
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On April 13, 1959, after two unsuccessful attempts by the US Air Force to place a Discoverer spacecraft into orbit - one of which had puttered out on the ground long before launch and another which the Air Force claimed was in orbit but actually probably came down in Antarctica - they tried again with Discoverer 2.
Discoverer 2 possibly came down on Spitsbergen and the US military scrambling to locate it was widely reported in the press at the time. It later served as the basis for Alistair MacLean's 1963 book Ice Station Zebra, and the 1968 movie of the same name.
Today, almost exactly fifty years after the events of Discoverer 2, it seems highly unlikely that the Soviet Union ever recovered the capsule. Discoverer 2 is probably currently sitting on the bottom of the cold arctic sea.

Source 

Corona was a US military reconnaissance satellite system operated by the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the US Air Force, used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union, China and other areas from June 1959 until May 1972.

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