
In November 1950, the USAF began development of a balloon reconnaissance system - curtis
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/ws-119l.html
======
mariuolo
Ironically, film from captured balloons was of such quality that it was used
by the Soviets to take pictures of the far side of the moon:
[https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-
side](https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side) .

~~~
orbital-decay
Interesting. Not trying to say it's not possible, but are there any sources on
that other than the article calling Luna probes "Luniks"? I've never heard
this story despite reading quite a lot about the soviet space program. I see a
lot of speculations on this story on the net without citing the original
source, some are even claiming that Luna-3 engineers kept the use of this film
in secret from the designers, which is absolutely impossible. Seems a lot like
a typical urban legend from after the fall of USSR...

~~~
new299
From what I can tell, the original source is mentioned here:

[http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html](http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html)
(V. Efimov, Novosti Kosmonavtiki, August 2000.)

It appears to be a Russian language magazine (and/or website), possibly this:

[http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/](http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/)

~~~
orbital-decay
Thanks, yes it's NK and it's quite a reputable magazine which is seldom wrong,
they usually have a lot of first-hand details from archives and industry
sources. I was a bit sceptical about this because any intel was in KGB/GRU
hands, and they generally weren't ready to share anything with anyone, even
with people working on the space program (according to Boris Chertok and many
others); everything was top secret.

------
dsfyu404ed
Seems like this was a win. They got a bunch of money to figure out how to take
pictures at altitudes difficult for surface to air defense systems to reach.
Think about what aircraft were in the development pipeline at this time. I
would not be surprised if the people higher up the chain considered
intelligence gathering to be secondary to developing reliable camera systems
for use at ~80'0000ft

------
sharkbot
There was just a story in CBC News about one of these devices discovered in
New Brunswick, Canada in the 50's; [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-
brunswick/thing-in-the-woo...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-
brunswick/thing-in-the-woods-cia-spy-camera-1.4221705)

There was a fair bit of cloak and dagger to recover the device at the time,
nice to see the veil pierced a bit to get the history on it.

