A Spy Agency's Challenge: How To Sort A Million Photos A Day
The Earth's entire land mass is being photographed by satellites every single day. Trying to make sense of all these images falls to a U.S. spy agency many have never heard of.
When the U.S. government took its first satellite photos in 1960, it wasn't easy getting those pictures back to Earth.
After the satellite took the pictures, the film was dropped from space in a capsule attached to a parachute. A military plane with a large hook flew by to collect the capsule in midair over the Pacific Ocean.
"They called the pilots who flew these missions 'star catchers,' because they were catching what looked like stars falling from the sky," said Katie Donegan, with the National Geospatial-Intelligence, or NGA.
