In 1960, a small orange parachute drifted from orbit carrying the first film ever returned from space. Its mission was classified — part of Project CORONA, America’s first spy-satellite program.
From Sputnik to Discoverer XIII, this episode uncovers how the U.S., Lockheed, and the CIA built secret eyes in the sky, and how a fragment of parachute in my grandfather’s box connects to the birth of satellite reconnaissance — and the dawn of the space-age Cold War.