Right Brain Right Lane : Cold War and Spy Satellites

7 April, 2018; Casa Grande, AZ

Atlas Obscura is a great resource for finding weird stuff to go see!

My friends actually found the objective for our walk the other day, but it's in the AtlasObscura as well. I have it bookmarked and sometimes even remember to go check out my current location for fun/bizarre things to go look at. I love it!!

Today, the find is left-over from the 60's, and our spy satellite program.

Corona Satellite Calibration Targets

Basically, these giant concrete Maltese Crosses were placed in a 16x16 mile grid (1 mile apart) to help the Corona Spy Satellites fine-tune their camera photos before flying over targets we wanted to spy on.

There are still a lot of them out in the desert even though the program is defunct. You can check out more details here.

As you can see, there are still a lot of them out in the desert. The ground is pretty barren around here, and the remains of the roads to each target are still walkable (and lots of them are drive-able).

However, the desert around cities is rarely pristine.

Sometimes, walking in the desert is more like walking through a landfill. The amount of garbage is stunning and very disappointing. I only took a few pictures - it was really sad.

From the ground, they look a little different!

Here's an over-head view to give you a good idea of what the targets look like.

Once we knew what we were looking for, they were easy to spot. (Sometimes, construction garbage, like concrete and wood can look like a target and lead you astray).