In February 1960 a station of the North American Air Defense System picked up a radar echo from an enormous space station orbiting the Earth. This intercept caused panic and alarm throughout America’s and the Soviet Union’s Defense Departments. It was the wrong kind of orbit for a Soviet launch. The space station was in a polar orbit, whereas the orbits of Soviet satellites were invariably inclined at 65 degrees to the equator, which took the satellites over South America and North Africa.
Archive for the 'Mystery Satellite' Category
In December 1965, Gemini astronauts Jim Lovell and Frank Borman also saw something strange in space during the second orbit of their record-breaking 14-day flight around Earth. Borman reported that he was observing an unidentified spacecraft some distance away from their capsule. Gemini Control at Kennedy suggested that he might be seeing the final stage of the huge Titan booster which had lifted him and Lovell into orbit earlier that day.
In June 1965, astronauts Ed White_the first American to walk in space and who was later to die with Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee in a launch-pad fire during a test of an Apollo capsule_and James McDivitt were passing over Hawaii in a Gemini capsule when they observed a strange metallic object some distance away. It appeared to have arms or projections. McDivitt took pictures of it with a motion picture camera. Those films have never been released.
On May 15th, 1963, a Mercury capsule carrying Gordon Cooper blasted into space from Cape Canaveral on a 22-orbit mission around the world. During the final orbit, Cooper informed the Muchea, Australia tracking station that he could see a glowing, greenish object rapidly approaching his capsule from directly ahead.
