*
- Produced by C. Scott Willis and James Bamford ". . . Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns and parades as the U.S. raced the USSR to the Moon in the 1960s. Few know that both superpowers ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on spying missions. In Astrospies, NOVA delves into the untold story of this top-secret space race, which might easily have turned into a shooting war in orbit. In Astrospies, viewers meet the elite corps of U.S. military astronauts, several of whom have never before talked about their clandestine training missions during the 1960s. As seen in footage broadcast for the first time, they practiced in full-scale mock-ups of the spy station, complete with spy cameras capable of resolving three-inch objects on the earth below. While the Apollo astronauts enjoyed ticker-tape parades, their astrospy colleagues trained in total obscurity until cost overruns and the new satellite technology doomed the program. Meanwhile, in response, the Soviets actually built three manned spy stations named Almaz and flew five missions during the 1970s. NOVA gains first-time access to a surviving Almaz station in a restricted Russian space facility, where an ex-cosmonaut demonstrates the high-powered spy cameras that were trained on U.S. cities. With a cannon designed to destroy hostile satellites or attack American astrospies Almaz was probably the only manned spacecraft ever equipped for space war."
*
Access to History - Blackbird: The Fastest Spy Plane - SR-71
Published on Oct 15, 2013 - In this episode of Access to
History, we leave the studio for the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum's Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center, where student veterans who are
part of Montgomery College's Combat2College Program got up close to
aircraft that made history. They also spent time with Retired Air Force
Colonel Joe Kinego, who recorded over 900 hours piloting the famed
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in military reconnaissance missions all over
the world during the Cold War. Traveling up to 17 miles above the Earth
at over 3 times the speed of sound, foreign powers tried to shoot down
the Blackbird but none were successful. Colonel Kinego's presentation to
the students during this visit contained information that at one time
was Top Secret.
***
Posts
