CORONA is the code name for the United States’ first optical spy satellite mission (1960-1972). The goal of the mission was to produce high-resolution analog photographs of most of the Earth’s surface, particularly political hotspots and military sites(Wikipedia). The regular recordings allowed large areas to be continuously monitored and evaluated for the Department of Defense. The more than 800,000 photos remained secret until 1995, when they were made publicly available by the U.S. Geological Survey by order of President Bill Clinton. The high-resolution CORONA photos (2 m to 60 cm pixel resolution) are available as scans for a fee from the USGS and provide a unique source of information for science, archaeology, and other disciplines.
Since the camera systems of the CORONA satellites have a special panoramic distortion, usual rectification methods cannot be used for the orthorectification of the scans.
mundialis has developed an innovative technology to rectify these unreferenced scans of CORONA photos to actual map references. This photogrammetric solution mathematically models the CORONA camera, allowing precise referencing of CORONA data.