Take a look inside the US’ Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a Cold War-era crewed spy satellite that never made it to space

• The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was a US proposal to send a crewed spy satellite to space in the 1960s.
• It would obtain high-resolution photographic imagery of US adversaries, like the Soviet Union.
• The top-secret program was met with criticism amid a decade marred by the economic costs of war.

Gathering intelligence on foreign nations was no easy task for America in the 1960s.

Spy planes like the U-2 captured high-resolution imagery but ran the risk of provoking foreign governments and being shot down. Photo reconnaissance satellites were safe from antiaircraft missiles and less provocative than overflights, but they produced lower-quality imagery and were slow to transmit data to photo interpreters.

Enter the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

The program aimed to expand the US military’s capabilities to surveil foreign adversaries at a time of high geopolitical tensions by marrying the two reconnaissance methods: operating a crewed spy satellite in space.