A Tale of Two Satellites

In the Cold War, space was a new and critical frontier for intelligence. Many early satellites were spy satellites (although they did a bit of science, too). In this episode, we learn about two early U.S. spy satellite programs, GRAB and CORONA. We learn what motivated these programs, why they were so important to future satellite development, and how to recover film capsules mid-air using a gigantic hook on the bottom of a plane. Thanks to our guests in this episode: Keith Masback, intelligence expert Andrew Ross, Guggenheim Fellow, National Air and Space Museum Find the transcript for this episode and more information at s.si.edu/airspaces11e9 .

You can listen to A Tale of Two Satellites online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

A Tale of Two Satellites is an episode from AirSpace by National Air and Space Museum.

This episode is 40:51 long.

This episode was published on Mar 26, 2026.

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