USGS Declassified Satellite Imagery Distribution

Abstract:

Declassified satellite images provide an important worldwide record of land-surface change. The first generation of U.S. photo intelligence satellites collected more than 860,000 images of the Earth’s surface between 1960 and 1972. The classified military satellite systems code-named CORONA, ARGON, and LANYARD acquired photographic images from space and returned the film to Earth for processing and analysis. With the success of the first release of classified satellite photography in 1995, images from U.S. military intelligence satellites KH-7 and KH-9 were declassified in accordance with Executive Order 12951 in 2002.The Keyhole (KH) satellite system KH-9 (Hexagon) operated between 1971 and 1984. The imagery generated are of historical interest and are expected to support current scientific research on climate change and related fields of inquiry. Almost all of the remaining KH-9 imagery was declassified in 2011 as a continuation of Executive Order 12951, the same order that declassified CORONA.