SR-71 Facts: 29 Details That Might Surprise You

The SR-71 Camera Had Amazing Range

This cropped image of Monterey Peninsula is about one-fourth of the 72-mile wide photo taken by the OBC in the SR-71.

“The Country’s Camera” surveyed 100,000 square miles of the Earth every hour. To put that in perspective, Colorado is about 104,000 square miles. If a four-hour mission was given the purpose of photographing the Southeast of the United States, the Optical Bar Camera would survey Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia all in that four hour time frame.