Year: 2021

New Intelligence Community Member Space Force is Looking For a Clearer Picture

Article by Scott Maucione                                       January 7, 2021                                         (federalnewsnetwork.com)

• The Space Force announced last month that it would become the 18th member of the US intelligence community. It still needs to submit its plans to Congress on how it will go about making the move. The Space Force’s two core space squadrons — space analysis and counter space analysis — are currently located at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB (see previous ExoArticle here). During the next year, the Pentagon will set up a National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC) focused on space.

• But the Pentagon wants to maintain the information ‘synergy’ that comes with all of these squadrons being able to interact on a daily basis and talk to each other, says Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force director of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance. So while NSIC will be separate from NASIC, their office will remain in the same building. Lauderback said the Air Force and Space Force are looking into the engineering and modeling to best maintain the two centers together.

• Space Force’s intelligence sector will be joining an already crowded community of 17 departments and agencies. Lauderback says that Space Force needs more sensors and presence in Earth’s orbit in order to characterize threats in space. “It’s just is so much more difficult in trying to characterize something that happens 12,000 miles away …that flies over the earth once every 90 minutes, all through technical means,” says Lauderback. “I just want to be able to make a more confident call and in a faster manner.” Another priority is bettering international agreements and education with Five Eye partners and other allies.

• Space Force has already received 2,400 recruits from the ranks of the Air Force. Space Force has just graduated its first seven enlisted trainees straight from basic training. Another 86 Air Force Academy cadets have been commissioned into Space Force, and there are 6,400 Air Force personnel who still plan to move over to the new military branch. “[N]ext year, we’ll have 98 cadets that will come over,” says Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond. “[W]e’re interviewing every single person that comes into the Space Force to be very, very selective.”

• Space Force is comprised of six career fields: Space operations, cyber operators, acquisition, engineering, cyber and intelligence. “[N]ow we have to develop those folks to fill those positions and do that organically,” says Gen. Raymond. “As new missions come about, we will add squadrons. [W]ith the units that were already in the Air Force, bringing them over, [we will] develop the manpower that fills those units today.”

 

         Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback

New details are emerging on how the 18th member of the intelligence community will be set up as the Space Force continues to entrench itself as the newest service of the military.

Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force director of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, said within a year the military will set up a National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC).

                     Gen. Jay Raymond

The center will develop from the two core space squadrons — space analysis and counter space analysis — that are now at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).

“Those squadrons will be the nucleus, they’d be the core of NSIC and then we will smatter a little bit of overhead on that to ensure that they’re getting what they need,” Lauderback said. “We absolutely want that to be co-located with NASIC. As a commander, there’s no way that we want to destroy the synergy that comes out of all of these squadrons being able to walk down the hallway and talk to each other.”

Lauderback said the Air Force and Space Force are looking into the engineering and modeling and other final assessments they need to station the two centers together.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

He Filmed History and Often Became Part of It

Article by Jorge Encinas                                     January 2, 2021                                         (gvnews.com)

• In 1952, Ralph Mayher enlisted in the US Marines. He had studied photography in a trade high school in Cleveland, so he was assigned as a combat photographer in a photographic unit with the Third Marine Air Wing at Opa-locka, Florida. For the next 22 years, Mayher traveled the world, documenting history as it happened – sometimes in dangerous circumstances – as a photographer for the Marine Corps and then for ABC News. He covered the Watts Riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. He filmed an ABC News documentary in the Soviet Union called “Comrade Soldier,” in 1967 (pictured above), and covered the Mexican government’s brutal suppression of university protesters known as the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968.adventure

• Mayher, now 90 years old, has no shortage of amazing stories spanning his 22 years of filming newsreels. Twice he and his wife of more than 50 years, Gypsie, had attempted to write a memoir on his exploits as a news photographer. But it wasn’t until they were stuck at home during this past year’s pandemic that they had the time to finish the job. “My wife had saved detailed documents and photographs for at least 25 years,” Mayher said. “It wasn’t easy going through the material, and especially the photographs, but we enjoyed doing it. I dedicated the book to my wife because she kept all of the documents with all of our moves around the country and in and out of the country. And without her keeping these documents and photographs, we wouldn’t have had a book.” The stories shared in their new book, The Last Newsreel, were well worth the wait.

• One of Mayher’s most fascinating stories happens to be his first. When PFC Mayher had just begun his two years as a photographer in the US Marine Corps in Florida, he heard about a UFO that appeared over Miami Beach on June 28, 1952. Local television station WYVJ in Miami was willing to pay $50 for footage of the UFO. Mayher decided he was going to be the one to capture the image. He positioned himself with his 16-millimeter camera at a spot where he anticipated the UFO would return, and sure enough, it did. His camera caught a bright yellowish-orange saucer-like UFO as it flew overhead. Three crew members flying a Navy amphibious aircraft nearby confirmed the UFO sighting at the same altitude, in the same area, and on the same night. Mayher processed the photos and turned them in to the newspaper. The next day, a Miami Daily News article headlined, “Miami’s Saucer? Marine Here Snaps Disc”. Mayher never got his $50.

• By 1957, Mayher had left the Marine Corps and was working for KYW-TV in Cleveland when the station decided to do a UFO documentary. He offered up his Miami Beach UFO photos. Surprisingly, two CIA officers showed up at the TV station and wanted to see the photos. Mayher gave them some 8x10s. As the CIA officers were leaving, they “suggested” that the UFO photographs should not be used on the show. The CIA agents also told Mayher to deny that the CIA were ever involved. “What do you mean?” Mayher responded. “This is a news story, and you’re here.'” The CIA officers pointed out that Mayher could be recalled to serve six more years in the Marine Corps, referring to him as ‘corporal’ – Mayher’s last rank. After the CIA’s veiled threat, Mayher never aired the photos for the UFO documentary. In 2011, Mayher learned that his original UFO photos were now in the possession of the US Air Force.

 

     Ralph Mayher in the 1960s

Ralph Mayher has no shortage of amazing stories spanning his 22 years of filming newsreels. And thanks to a

          Ralph Mayher

little cabin fever, he put them down in black and white in a book recounting the history he recorded for the world.

Mayher, 90, said his two previous attempts to put his memories into words didn’t pan out when the stress of putting them together stalled the efforts.

But with the pandemic making travel and everyday errands ill-advised, he decided to give it another shot. And the stories in “The Last Newsreel” were well worth the wait.

Mayher, who lives in Green Valley, took up photography at a trade high school in Cleveland. In 1952, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, where his education took him straight into a photographic unit with the Third Marine Air Wing at Opa-locka, Florida.

He was a combat cameraman, but Mayher said he thankfully didn’t deploy to Korea. But his time at Opa-locka was anything but typical.

And that’s where Mayher’s story begins. A Marine, a 16-millimeter camera and a UFO.

Miami Beach

    Ralph and Gypsie Mayher

PFC. Mayher had heard about a UFO that appeared over Miami Beach on June 28, 1952, and he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the last sighting.

He heard a local television station was willing to shell out $50 for footage of the UFO, and Mayher decided he was going to be the one to capture the image.

“So, I tell my buddies I’m going to go out and film a UFO at Miami Beach the following night, June 29, 1952,” he said. “And they all said, ‘We knew you were a little bit off your rocker, but here’s the camera. Good luck.’ I said not only thank you for the good luck, but we’re going to have a beer party when I get my 50 bucks from WTVJ in Miami.”

And, wouldn’t you know it, Mayher’s hunch paid off. His 16-millimeter camera caught the bright yellowish-orange saucer from Miami resident Herman Stern’s back patio.

“The gentleman who allowed me to go out on his patio, he thought I was crazy as well, but when the damn thing flew over, I was able to get about nine frames of film of the UFO,” he said.

It wasn’t just Mayher who saw it. Three Navy crew members flying a Consolidated PBY Catalina confirmed the UFO sighting flying at the same altitude, in the same area, on the same night.

The Miami Daily News reported the sighting in an article headlined, “Miami’s Saucer?: Marine Here Snaps ‘Disc.'”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Special SAS Unit Trained to Respond to Alien Invasion of Earth

Article by Isobel Dickinson                                        January 9, 2021                                       (dailystar.co.uk)

• The Special Air Service (SAS) is a ‘special forces’ unit of the British Army that was founded in 1941. The unit specializes in a number of roles including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and covert reconnaissance. SAS troops have trained alongside US special forces in America for capture missions involving every conceivable threat.

• The elite British soldiers are trained to use non-lethal weapons against a variety of potential threats. A special projects unit of about twenty SAS troopers is even prepared to encounter the “alternative threat’’ from extraterrestrial aliens. Non-lethal weapons include spraying foam, which covers a target and hardens rapidly, preventing them from moving.

• Most people believe that life on other planets exist. In 1920, Albert Einstein asked, “Why should Earth be the only planet supporting human life?” The late Professor Stephen Hawking warned against contacting Little Green Men. Hawking once said, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

• So if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, then you must accept that alien life could present a threat and you need to plan for it. In 2018, we learned that British defense experts had spent 50 years trying to catch a UFO so they could use the technology to build new super weapons. Declassified files showed that the UK government feared that China or the Soviet Union may had impounded a UFO and were using it to develop their own super-fast warplanes.

 

The SAS have got ET in their sights, the Daily Star Sunday can reveal.

A special projects unit of around 20 troopers is ready to tackle “alternative threats’’.

The elite soldiers are trained to use non-lethal weapons against a variety of potential threats – including aliens.

A source told us: “ The SAS has to be prepared for anything, and any threat.

“That includes everything from terrorists to human bio-weapons where someone has been deliberately infected with a deadly bug, all the way through to an alien life form.

                    Stephen Hawking

“I know it sounds bonkers but the SAS train for capture missions for every threat.

“They can use a range of non-lethal weapons, one of which involves spraying foam which covers a target and hardens rapidly, preventing them from moving.”

                        Albert Einstein

Troops are understood to have trained alongside US special forces in America.

Our source added: “ Most people believe that life on other planets exists. Even Einstein in 1920 said, ‘Why should Earth be the only planet supporting human life?’

“If you believe in that then you must accept that alien life may present a threat, so you need to plan for it.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Britain’s SAS & Global SpecOps Trained to Fight Extraterrestrials

On January 9, Britain’s Daily Star ran a story about elite SAS personnel being trained to fight any potential adversary including extraterrestrials. Rather than such training being based on a remote possibility, multiple sources have revealed that elite military forces from around the world have been secretly recruited, and trained to fight visiting extraterrestrials. In this Exopolitics Today podcast, Dr. Michael Salla discusses the news about Britain’s SAS in the context of historic reports of firefights between military personnel and extraterrestrials.

Links discussed in  Podcast:

A New Frontier in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Article by Adam Frank                                       December 31, 2020                                        (washingtonpost.com)

• On December 18th, ‘Breakthrough Listen’ – a privately funded offshoot of SETI, the ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ – detected a distant “candidate signal” labeled BLC-1, which SETI astronomers would like to think is coming from another intelligent civilization in the galaxy. Of course, these scientists are quick to point out that it is probably not coming from another civilization, but just radio interference from our own planet.

• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence began more than 60 years ago. Proponents of SETI have long complained that there has never been sufficient funding or telescope time available to make a dent in the effort. In the 1980s and 1990s, Congressional legislators withheld “wasteful” SETI funding, and it has survived since on private funding from millionaires like Yuri Milner who in 2015 pledged $100 million to create Breakthrough Listen.

• Jason Wright and his astronomy colleagues at Penn State have argued that the reason we have not found life elsewhere in the universe is simple: We haven’t really looked. If the galaxy were an ocean, so far astronomers have splashed around in just one hot-tub’s worth of water.

• With Milner’s funding, the Breakthrough Listen project was provided access to telescopes from the Parkes radio dish in Australia and the Green Bank instrument in West Virginia, and resources to explore new search methods and technologies. These include machine-learning initiatives designed to accelerate “classic” SETI research. Artificial intelligence can enable computers to identify those all-important ‘weirdness needles’ in the cosmic signal haystack of data. The next generation of instruments, including the soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope, should enable SETI astronomers to explore the atmospheres of smaller, Earthlike planets and search for the chemical imprint of an exo-biosphere.

• Meanwhile, the ‘exoplanet revolution’ opened a second frontier in the search for ET. In the mid-1990s, astronomers found the first exoplanet, a Jupiter-size world on a four-day orbit around the star 51 Pegasi. Today, we know that almost every star in the sky hosts a family of worlds. Scientists worldwide are building a census of alien planets, showing which stars have planets and which planets are in the star’s “Goldilocks zone,” where surface temperatures are just right (that is, anywhere between freezing and boiling) for life to form. As a result, astronomers can find out exactly where they should be looking for life and intelligence.

• Astronomers are also gaining the capacity to probe the atmospheres of distant planets for ‘biosignatures’. By interrogating light passing through a far-flung world’s gaseous veil, astronomers can compile its chemical inventory and see what’s in the planet’s atmosphere. Alien astronomers looking at Earth, for example, would see oxygen and methane in our atmosphere — a signature of life’s presence on our planet. Scientists have already explored the atmospheres of a few Jupiter-size exoplanets.

• But why stop at biosignatures? The presence of technology on a planet might be far more detectable than biology. Telescopes on the drawing boards right now might have the capacity to see city lights on distant worlds. In 2019, NASA awarded the first-ever research grant to study atmospheric technosignatures, with two more funded in 2020. All this means that the search for technosignatures is becoming just as plausible and just as important as the search for biosignatures, representing a thrilling new face of SETI, embracing both anomaly-based searches and targeted explorations of exoplanets and their environments.

• The truth about the search for intelligent exo-civilizations is that it’s probably going to take a lot of time and effort. That’s the price you pay for great science. This extraordinary journey — taking us to the shores of alien worlds — is really only just getting started. Something remarkable is happening in the science of life and intelligence beyond Earth. The age of “technosignatures” is dawning.

• [Editor’s Note]  The boys at SETI are dedicated… dedicated, that is, to making sure that the average person remains woefully ignorant of the multitude of intelligent beings and civilizations that permeate our galaxy and universe. Seth Shostak and his accomplices at SETI are simply shills for the deep state. The deep state controls several secret space programs that interact constantly with mostly negative extraterrestrial beings, and have access to their advanced technologies which the deep state wants to maintain for themselves only, in order to preserve their advantage.

But it appears that 2021 will usher in a new level of disclosure of this underlying deep state cabal that has repressed the natural technological and spiritual development of the human species on this Earth since World War II, when the presence of extraterrestrial beings, both benevolent and malevolent, greatly increased in response to our species’ own technological achievements. Suddenly, Earth humans were a more interesting species to scrutinize, and more valuable to exploit. By using human (?) deep state operatives to infiltrate all aspects of government and society, these negative beings orchestrated a false reality which has supported their control agenda for the past seventy years.

We have a unique opportunity now to expose this deep state cabal and the negative extraterrestrial entities that have given this cabal its capacity to control the planet. The time has come to reclaim the planet for our own species, as the benevolent beings and our human cousins of the Galactic Federation have urged us to do. They won’t step in and do it for us. We must save ourselves. It appears that President Trump has declared war on the deep state, and this much anticipated transition has begun.

We are living in the most fantastic period in human history. It is just a shame that more people have not yet awakened to recognize the battle between good and evil that is now unfolding. Once we have overcome our deep state oppressors, the human species will enter a golden age of higher spiritual consciousness and advanced technologies (available to everyone) that will transform our planet as we assume our rightful place among the multitude of space-faring civilizations which deep state operatives, such as SETI and the Washington Post, are desperately trying to prevent.

 

On Dec. 18, the world learned that Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded search for extraterrestrial

                        Jason Wright

intelligence, had found its first official candidate signal. The signal’s existence lit up the Internet. Was BLC-1, as it’s called, finally our moment of contact? Breakthrough Listen scientists, now hard at work on a paper about their findings, were quick to explain that the answer was probably “no”: Given the wealth of human-made radio signal interference out there, BLC-1 will probably turn out to be of human origin.

Their preliminary conclusion, however, does not defuse the excitement of BLC-1. The fact that there’s a candidate at all is cause for celebration. That’s because something remarkable is happening in the science of life and intelligence beyond Earth. The age of “technosignatures” is dawning.

                             Yuri Milner

Many people have the romantic notion that astronomers huddle over their telescopes every night and scan the skies looking for signals from distant, alien civilizations. That, unfortunately, just ain’t happening. Though the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began more than 60 years ago, there was never sufficient funding or telescope time available to make a dent in the effort. In the 1980s and 1990s, some in Congress cited public SETI funding (as little as it was) as a press-worthy example of wasteful spending. Government support mostly dried up, leaving the field running on fumes. As Jason Wright and colleagues at Penn State have demonstrated, if the sky is an ocean that needs to be searched for life, so far astronomers have splashed around in just one hot-tub’s worth of water. The reason we have not found life elsewhere in the universe is simple: We haven’t really looked.

Now, however, the long desert of opportunity may finally be giving way to a new era of growth. In 2015, Internet billionaire Yuri Milner pledged $100 million to create Breakthrough Listen, a next-generation radio-based search for extraterrestrial intelligence. With a single stroke, Milner helped rejuvenate the field: The project provided access to telescopes from the Parkes radio dish in Australia and the Green Bank instrument in West Virginia, and provided resources to explore new search methods and technologies. These include machine-learning initiatives designed to accelerate “classic” SETI research of the kind epitomized by BLC-1. As pioneered by Frank Drake and others (and popularized by the 1997 movie “Contact”), classic SETI searches for signals that are anomalous, as opposed to those originating from natural or human causes. Historically, the challenge has been that SETI observations produce tidal waves of data. But artificial intelligence can enable computers to identify those all-important weirdness needles in the cosmic signal haystack of all that data.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

With the Passage of the IAA, Will We Get A UFO Dump From the Pentagon?

Article by Jazz Shaw                                              December 31, 2020                                             (hotair.com)

• Back in June, some big UFO news focused around a provision that was inserted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) that directed the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force to produce an unclassified report on what they know about UFOs. It directed that this report be released to the Senate committee within 180 days of the enactment of the IAA. Well, the IAA was included in the $1.4 trillion government funding package that was passed on December 27th along with a $900 billion COVID-relief fund. So the 180 day clock is ticking. So what can we expect to see when that clock runs out?

• Christopher Mellon is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee. Mellon played an integral role in the development of the committee’s UFO legislation. He points out that the UFO phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress, and therefore it is more likely that some sort of report will be released. Any expectations of revelations of UFO incidents or discoveries under current investigation, however, are more unlikely.

• First of all, the Pentagon can respond by saying that they’ve not being given enough time and will need to postpone it – for a very long time. Second, this report specifically pertains to unclassified material. All of the juicy stuff will no doubt be deemed ‘classified’. Thirdly, back in September, after the Pentagon’s verification of the existence of the UAP Task Force, numerous reporters were contacting the Pentagon’s one and only spokesperson to handle UAP questions, Susan Gough. Gough began issuing a boilerplate refusal to any and all questions regarding details of UAP incidents under investigation. To wit: “To maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.” You can rest assured they have zero intention of starting to discuss it publicly now. Short of the President ordering specific documents from the UAP Task Force declassified (document that they somehow already know about), it seems obvious that the Pentagon intends to keep a lid on all of this.

• The military and the intelligence community routinely overclassify information, covering virtually every area of interest, not just UFOs. And once they lock something down it requires a herculean effort to bring it back to light. I can’t see those channels in our government sweeping away more than 70-years of obfuscation and deception with one sweep of a new broom. While cautiously hopeful about the pending release of this report, I’m definitely not getting my hopes up.

 

A lot of news came out of that massive COVID relief bill with bazillions of dollars in other spending wrapped up in it. One item that didn’t draw nearly as much attention was the fact that the annual Intelligence Authorization Act was rolled in as part of that mess. The IAA is obviously a necessary bit of housekeeping that Congress has to take care of on a regular basis, but this year’s version was of particular interest to people in the ufology community. I wrote about this when the measure was drafted back in June, specifically focusing on the provisions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that made it so interesting to the saucerheads. It dealt with internal communications challenges for the UAP Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) and directed the UAPTF to produce an unclassified report on their progress within 180 days of when the measure was enacted. Well, now it’s enacted. And as The Debrief pointed out this week, that means that the clock is ticking. But what should we really expect to receive when that clock strikes midnight?

“Now, with the recent passing of the Omnibus, the clock has officially started ticking, and The Pentagon’s

          Christopher Mellon

UAP Task Force has 180 days to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with their unclassified report detailing The Pentagon’s current investigations into UFOs.”

“The newly enacted Intelligence Authorization Act incorporates the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report language calling for an unclassified, all-source report on the UAP phenomenon. This was accomplished in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the bill,” says Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, who played an integral role in the development of the legislation.”

“Consequently, it’s now fair to say that the request for an unclassified report on the UAP phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress,” Mellon told The Debrief in an email.”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

The Betz Mystery Sphere

Article by Caroline Delbert                                       December 31, 2020                                              (popularmechanics.com)

• In 1974, the Betz family moved to a home in Fort George Island, Florida, at the beach near Jacksonville. In the yard of the house they discovered a 30-pound shiny metal sphere. They assumed that it must be a cannonball from Renaissance-era Spanish colonizers in the area, although it is unlikely that Spanish missionaries would have cannons. Curiously, the sphere was clean and free of corrosion. It appeared to be made of stainless steel or silver plate, although 16th century Spaniards would have used iron.

• The family soon discovered that the sphere behaved autonomously – rolling by itself, making noises, and vibrating. They noticed that it made a throbbing noise in reaction to guitar music. It reportedly moved “intensely” when the sun shone brightly. When it was rolled in one direction, it would change direction midway and head back to the person who rolled it. Gerri Betz claimed that when the family dog got next to the sphere, “she began to whimper and cover her ears with her paws, something I’ve never seen her do before.” An expert from a research firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana examined the sphere and found “radio waves coming from it and a magnetic field around it,” according to Gerri. Could it be alien technology?

• The US Navy analyzed the sphere at Jacksonville Naval Air Station. A x-ray managed to penetrate the steel. A Navy spokesman remarked, “We do know it is not an explosive and presents no hazard.” “I say it came from Earth.” Upon examining the metal sphere, renowned ufologist J. Allen Hynek agreed the object was manmade.

• The Betz’ accounts of the sphere’s spontaneous motions and noises made the local news and continued to inspire UFO origin theory believers. Seeing the steel ball on television, the president of a Jacksonville equipment supply company compared it with a stainless steel ball he kept in stock. He produced a Bell & Howell stainless steel ball that was 8 inches across and weighed over 21 pounds—almost the same size as the sphere. It is also unlikely that an advanced alien technology would use a steel alloy 431 used in fasteners and bolts on Earth. And not even a solid steel ball would remain unblemished after falling through the Earth’s atmosphere as suggested.

• As for the noted strange behaviors of the sphere, which have been festooned with extra details over years, experts say the sphere was probably rolling on an uneven floor. Said a Navy spokesman, “I believe [the sphere moved] because of the construction of the house. It’s old and has uneven stone floors. The ball is almost perfectly balanced, and it takes just a little indentation to make it move or change direction.” UFO theory stalwarts attributed the spontaneous motions and vibrations due to having different sections of different materials inside the alien sphere, making it unknown to terrestrial science despite being coated in a carefully human-developed steel alloy.

• It’s easy to see how a regular family in Florida would decide a strange object in their yard had some kind of improbable alien properties. The 1970s were a heyday for UFOs, new religious movements, and transcendental meditation – a heady mix for people to run with some wild ideas. Such a legend could grow very quickly.

 

The Conspiracy

The Betz mystery sphere is a strange object that the Betz family found near their home in Fort George

   Gerri Betz and her son

Island, Florida in 1974. It’s a metal sphere that’s a little smaller than a bowling ball (a diameter of 8 inches), but a solid 8 pounds heavier than even the sturdiest professionals use (22 pounds).
The Betz family said the sphere acted of its own accord, moving and making noises. What does this surprising backyard shotput have to do with conspiracy theories? Is it some kind of autonomous cannonball? Could it actually a piece of alien technology?

The Origins

                      J. Allen Hynek

After a fire destroyed their property in March 1974, the Betz family found the bizarre metal sphere in their yard and believed it was a historic cannonball from Florida’s Renaissance-era Spanish colonizers, Skeptoid explains. But the sphere was clean, free of corrosion, and shiny. Weaponry in the Spanish colonial time period, unlikely from Florida’s missionaries to begin with, would have been iron or stone—not stainless steel or silver plate.
When the family took the sphere home, they said, it started to behave by itself. Their accounts were of the sphere rolling by itself, making noises, and vibrating.

From Wonderful Engineering: “Terry, the son of Antoine and [G]erri Betz, was playing guitar and found that the sphere reacted to the sound of the guitar and made a throbbing noise which scared the family dog. Things took an even odder turn when they were sitting on the floor and rolling the sphere towards one another. When it was sent in one direction, it would change direction midway and head back to the person who rolled it.”
In an April 1974 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Gerri Betz said when the family dog got next to the sphere, “she began to whimper and cover her ears with her paws, something I’ve never seen her do before.”

The Betz family suspected solar radiations affected the sphere, which may have been why it reportedly moved “intensely” when the sun shone brightly, according to Wonderful Engineering. Eventually, the U.S. military got their hands on the sphere to analyze it for more answers.

When an expert from a research firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana examined the sphere, he “found radio waves coming from it and a magnetic field around it,” Gerri Betz told the St. Petersburg Times. Then, the U.S. Navy analyzed the sphere at Jacksonville Naval Air Station. A Navy spokesman told the St. Petersburg Times that the Navy’s first X-ray attempts failed because its “machine wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the steel, but two subsequent tests showed the contents of the globe.”
|
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

US Air Force Spacecraft Will Beam Solar Power to Earth

Article by Caroline Dlbert                                            December 30, 2020                                         (popularmechanics.com)

• Cutting edge solar panels on Earth – prototypes developed by scientists for research, not the commercial ones you can readily buy – operate at around 30 to 40 percent efficiency. But if these solar panels operated above the clouds in space, the efficiency would be far greater. As CleanTechnica’s Tina Casey writes: “There are no clouds to block or even reduce solar panel efficacy. They can pivot, maybe even completely freely, to maximize exposure to more sun over a longer time each day. The sunlight is more potent outside of Earth’s atmosphere.”

• In December, the US Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled ‘Helios’ – a component part of the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) project – that will be launched into space on the Arachne spacecraft in 2024. The Helios component will gather power for other spacecraft as a fueling station in space.

• Arachne/Helios also serves a working model of an emerging technology that can convert solar energy to radio frequency (RF) power, transmitting that energy to the Earth, and converting it to usable power. “Solar is critical to our long-term spaceflight plans because of its plentiful and completely renewable nature,” says Casey. “We’ll likely learn a great deal from the use of solar power in space and then… extend to Earth.”

• The logistical challenge is to get the solar panels positioned into space. But the technology to “beam” power is pretty established at this point, relying on directed mirrors and receiver panels that focus energy into beams that act as wireless wires through the air. The right kind of solar panels paired with storage could periodically beam power to specific places without losing notable energy.

 

Beaming solar power from outer space sounds like a Marvel movie plot, but space could remove barriers to solar acceptance that dominate the Earthbound discourse.

Could the secret to our energy future be solar panels above the clouds, or even above the Karman line altogether?

Besides the logistical challenges of even getting solar panels up in space, the benefits are pretty airtight, as CleanTechnica’s Tina Casey writes. There are no clouds to block or even reduce solar panel efficacy. They can pivot, maybe even completely freely, to maximize exposure to more sun over a longer time each day. The sunlight is more potent outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

Right now, even the best solar panels are reaching something like 30 to 40 percent efficiency, and these are mostly cutting-edge prototypes developed by scientists for research—not the ones you can readily buy.

             Tina Casey

That means the huge advantage of higher-up sunlight would directly translate, perhaps even to the difference between

              USAF’s Arachne spacecraft

feasible solar and not. Again, though, this is without the logistics of putting panels into space.

And the technology to “beam” power is pretty established at this point, relying on directed mirrors and receiver panels that focus energy into beams that act, basically, like wireless wires through the air. The right kind of solar panels paired with storage could periodically beam power to specific places without losing notable energy.

Earlier this month, the Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled a component coyly named Helios (after the original Greek sun god) for its forthcoming Arachne spacecraft, the main part of the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) project. Arachne will launch in 2024.

Helios will gather power for other spacecraft, making it an essential research piece as well as proof of concept for some big ideas NASA has about traveling to the moon and subsequently to Mars.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Video Shows UFO Soaring Past SpaceX Craft and ISS in ‘2020’s Best Sighting’

Article by Simon Green                                       December 30, 2020                                         (dailystar.co.uk)

• On December 6th, as the SpaceX ‘Dragon’ rocket capsule was delivering cargo to the International Space Station, an unusual “metallic” object can be seen moving up the camera screen before disappearing behind the craft.

• The video clip (see below) was sent to the ‘thirdphaseofthemoon’ YouTube channel run by Blake and Brent Cousins. Despite only lasting several seconds, has been lauded as one of the most eye-opening sightings for months. Blake Cousins told Daily Star that the object seemed to have “three thrusters on the back” but didn’t resemble any kind of aircraft on Earth. “Some people speculated, as I did, that this could be some sort of secret asset in the Space Force yet to be revealed to the public,” Blake suggested.

• Plenty of viewers dismissed the object in the video as nothing more than space debris or satellites. But Blake disagrees, saying that the object is “way too close to the ISS and too large” to be space debris. “If this was space debris, the ISS would be in jeopardy of a collision that would be catastrophic.” Furthermore, “[S]atellites do not resemble anything like this and, again to have it so close to the ISS is dangerous.” “[I]t could be something otherworldly…”

• “This sighting, in my opinion,” says Blake Cousins, “is possibly the best UFO sighting with regards to an ISS encounter with a UFO for the year 2020.” “I also believe that in 2021 there will be a pick-up in UFO sightings due to the fact Elon Musk has HD 4K cameras aboard the SpaceX… and they’re going to be taken aboard the ISS. …[W]e’re going to be seeing clear video and photographs of these anomalous objects surrounding the ISS.” “2021 will be a huge year for UFO sightings.”

 

            metallic object near the ISS

A mysterious object has been spotted hurtling past a SpaceX craft in what has been described as the best sighting of the year.

The baffling footage was taken as the Dragon capsule reached the International Space Station to deliver cargo on December 6.

             Blake and Brent Cousins

In the clip, an unusual “metallic” object can be seen moving up the camera screen before disappearing behind the craft.

It was sent in to YouTube UFO channel thirdphaseofmoon and, despite only lasting several seconds, has been lauded as one of the most eye-opening sightings for months.

Blake Cousins, who runs the channel, told Daily Star that the object seemed to have “three thrusters on the back” but didn’t resemble any kind of aircraft on Earth.

“Some people speculated, as I did, that this could be some sort of secret asset in the Space Force yet to be revealed to the public,” he suggested.

Conspiracists have often claimed strange sightings in the skies could actually be top-secret aircraft developed by the Space Force, which have yet to be made public.

Object traveling past the ISS (‘thirdphaseofthemoon’ YouTube)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Cigar-Shaped Vessels in California Skies Spark Alien Debate

Article by Nirmal Narayanan                                      December 27, 2020                                      (ibtimes.co.in)

• California seems to be a hotbed of UFO activities. Many UFO sightings have been reported in the state. On December 23rd, two illuminated cigar-shaped flying objects were spotted in the night skies over Orange County, California (see image above).

• To believers, the video on the LUFOS YouTube channel (see below) is more proof of alien existence on Earth. Skeptics contend that the luminous flying objects are a reflection of objects on a window inside a house.

• A few weeks back, Haim Eshed, the former head of Israel’s space security program, revealed that aliens are in direct contact with the United States and Israel. Eshed said that United States is a member of the Galactic Federation, which comprises a multitude of alien representatives. He also said that there is a secret underground base on Mars with advanced facilities where both both human and alien representatives live.

 

Unlike people from other countries, citizens of the United States are known for having an obsession with sky watching, and as a result, the country has

                            Haim Eshed

reported a record number of UFO sightings over years. And now, a new UFO video, apparently captured from Orange County has surfaced online. The mysterious video shows two cigar-shaped flying objects hovering in the night skies in an eerie manner.

Mysterious UFO sightings continue

Conspiracy theorists strongly believe that California is a hotbed of UFO activities, and over the years, several UFO sightings have been reported in the state. The recent UFO video was shot on December 23, and the flying objects spotted in the skies had illuminating lights on the body.

The video uploaded on YouTube by the channel named LUFOS has apparently convinced conspiracy theorists, and they claim that events like these are authentic proof of alien existence on earth.
However, skeptics dismissed the alien rumors, and they made it clear that the flying objects that appeared in the skies could be most probably a reflection of objects placed in the interior of the house. These skeptics also claim that the photographer who captured the event was behind window glass, and the reflection of light or objects from the room’s interior has resulted in the UFO debate.

Is the United States working with aliens?

1:05 minute video of cigar craft over California (‘LUFOS’ YouTube)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

More Stories About the “Star People” Shared by American Indians

Article by Arjun Walia                                 December 28, 2020                                   (collective-evolution.com)

• Continuing to report the work of Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw Native American. Dr. Clarke was told the legends of extraterrestrial “Star People” by her grandmother. She has been collecting encounters between these ETs and Native Indians for many years, which she has compiled in her book: Encounters With Star People, Untold Stories of American Indians. “My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago,” says Dr. Clarke. “The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.” Here is another such story.

• In 1930, a fur trapper named Arnaud Laurent and his son were traveling near Lake Anjikuni in northern Canada when they saw a ‘cylindrical or bullet-shaped’ aircraft crossing the northern sky. Shortly thereafter, another trapper, Joe Labelle, snowshoed to the Eskimo fishing village of Anjikuni, home to 2,000 Eskimos (pictured above). The village was unnaturally silent. Looking into each hut and storehouse, Labelle found blackened stew pots but not a single human.

• Labelle went directly to a telegraph office to report the mystery to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties arrived and were baffled by the mass disappearance of the villagers. A search party found untouched provisions and food in the huts, but no villagers. The sled dogs belonging to the Eskimos were found dead – buried under a 12-foot snow drift at the perimeter of the camp. Later, that night, the Mounties stared in wonder at a strange blue, pulsating light, quite unlike the Northern Lights common to that part of Canada.

• Newspapers throughout the world reported the disappearance of the 2,000 Eskimos in 1930. The Anjikuni Eskimo villagers disappearance remains unsolved today. Stories are still told in Eskimo communities about the UFO that abducted an entire village.

• In addition to the disappearance of the entire Anjikuni village, Native Eskimos also relate stories of the appearance of a mysterious craft in the sky that corresponded with the disappearance of entire Eskimo families without a trace. On one occasion, a family of fourteen disappeared, leaving behind full dinner plates on the table, a television blaring in the bedroom, and an oven that had not been turned off. Despite years of searching, no family member was ever located. But their relatives can show you a burned out circle on the ground where they believed a spacecraft landed and took them away. There are even entire civilizations that have vanished without a trace, like the Mayans for example. Some believe they were also ‘taken’ by extraterrestrials.

• Dr. Clarke also tells about someone named Luther who lived on a reserve in North Dakota. According to Luther, “Once a whole family disappeared. I was a young man when the family disappeared…around 1946 or 1947. They were never found. When their relatives went to visit they found everything just like they got up in the middle of dinner and walked away. Food on the table and everything seemed to be in order, except the family. There were seven of them in all: they were gone. No one on the reservation ever saw them again. They held a ceremony and the Holy man said that they were taken to live among the Star People.” Luther says that Star People visiting the reservation was not uncommon when he was a child. “Sometimes when people disappeared on the reservation, it was said that the Star People had taken them away to live in the stars.” But when the government came in and changed the land, the Star People stopped visiting.

• Luther describes his own UFO encounter: “Maybe five or six years or so after the family disappeared. I was down by the lake one evening. The horses went there to drink in the evenings and I wanted to harness (one of the horses) and put him in the barn. It was just about dusk. Suddenly the hair on my body stood up like an electrical shock. I looked around and that’s when I saw it. A huge object came in over the butte to the north of the property. It came slowly. It was the size of a battleship. I sat down on the edge of the lake and watched. The horses ran away. I was alone. The craft moved to the center of the lake and just stayed there without moving. It was suspended in mid-air. At some point, I started back toward the cabin. That’s when they saw me, I guess. Suddenly a light came out like a search light and fell directly on me. I kept walking. I didn’t know what else to do. When I got back to the house I went inside.”

• Luther continues: “I went into the bedroom to look out the window and that’s when I saw them. Two of them. They were in my bedroom. I stopped, frozen in my tracks when I saw them. They looked at me and seemed just as surprised as me. They were about 5 foot 7 or 8. They were dressed in light-colored uniforms that glistened when the light from the craft hit them. I started backing toward the door and they told me they wouldn’t hurt me. They were searching for something. I understood it to be something they had left behind or left here, but they could not find it. When I asked them what they were looking for, they replied, but I did not understand what they said.” Luther describes the ETs as “shaped like humans”. “They told me not to be afraid and I wasn’t,” said Luther. “They actually acted like I wasn’t even in the room…They were all business.”

• Luther vividly remembers an alien having “this stick like thing.” “It had some kind of motor, I think,” says Luther, “because I remember lights blinking on it. Strangest machine I ever saw. I had never seen anything like that and I saw a lot in the war. They held it and pointed it around the room. The stick must have talked to them or something, because once they pointed it in every direction, they seemed satisfied that I did not have what they were looking for. They put it in a holster.”

• Then the extraterrestrial visitors went back to their craft and left. But before the craft took off, it stopped and hovered over the spot where the missing family once lived. “Their cabin was submerged in water after the lake was built by the government (and the area flooded). I watched for maybe 30-40 minutes. The spaceship just hung there. No movement, no sound, and then suddenly it moved upward and was gone. I have not seen it since.”
• Apollo 12 astronaut Al Worden shared his beliefs on the subject of extraterrestrial life a few years ago: “We are the aliens. [W]e just think they’re somebody else, but we’re the ones who came from somewhere else. [Our ancestors] got in a little space craft and …came here …landed and …started civilization here.” Multiple astronauts have said that, without a doubt, we have been visited and are still being visited by extraterrestrials, and that NASA astronauts have been privileged enough to be in on that type of information. Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, for example, was quite outspoken on the subject throughout his lifetime.

 

  Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke

“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.”

I’ve been sharing the work of Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw and has been researching the Star People and collecting encounters between them and Native Indians for many years. She first learned about the “Star People” when her grandmother told her the ancient legends of her people.

I’ve written about a story she shared regarding an elder who told a story about a ship that crashed on his reservation. I wrote about another elder who shared a story of a petrified alien heart, which he claimed belonged to the Star People. I’ve written one about an elder who claimed to have been told that humans were one of four violent species in the universe. One of the most popular ones was about the stories told by indigenous elders about Star People who are currently, and have been for a long time, living inside of the Earth. The last one I wrote about was a story from a Native American man who claimed to have had an interesting experience in an Alaskan Blizzard.

This will be yet another article sharing the stories Dr. Clarke compiled in her book, Encounters With Star People, Untold Stories of American Indians. Chapter three is titled “Sometimes they come for families.” Right off the bat I find this interesting because having been a researcher into the phenomena myself for a very long time, I know that the idea that some of these beings are ‘taking’ people, families, and in some cases large communities is not uncommon.

One example Dr. Clarke shares in her book is as follows: “In 1930, a fur trapper named Arnaud Laurent and his son saw a strange light and an unusual aircraft crossing the northern sky toward Lake Anjikuni in northern Canada. The trappers described the object as cylindrical or bullet-shaped. Shortly thereafter, Joe Labelle, another trapper, snowshoed to the Eskimo fishing village of Anjikuni. The village, home to 2,000 Eskimos, appeared unnaturally silent when he arrived. He

Anjikuni Native Eskimos

visited every hut and storehouse and found blackened stew pots, but no people. Inexplicably, he did not find a single human track in the settlement. Labelle, concerned about the missing people, went directly to a telegraph office and reported the mystery to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Several hours later, the Mounties arrived and were baffled by the mass disappearance of the villagers.”

                         Al Worden

“A search party looked for the missing villagers, but they were never found. The sled dogs belonging to the Eskimos were found buried under a 12-foot snow drift at the perimeter of the camp. All of them had starved to death. The search party also discovered untouched provisions and food in the huts.”

“Later, that night, the Mounties stared in wonder as a strange blue glow lit a steady, pulsating light,

           Dr. Edgar Mitchell

unlike the Northern Lights that frequented that part of Canada. Newspapers throughout the world reported the baffling disappearance of the 2,000 Eskimos. Many people believed there would be a rational explanation for the disappearance, but the Anjikuni group disappearance remains unsolved. Today, stories are still told in the Eskimo communities about the UFO that abducted an entire village.”

“While this event in Canada is rare and unusual, there are encounters spoken about on reservations where entire families have disappeared without a trace. Just as in the case of the Canadian disappearance, these events occurred simultaneously with the emergence of a mysterious craft. During the course of my research, I was told about two such events. On one occasion a family of 14 disappeared, leaving behind plates that had been filled on the dinner table, a television blaring in the bedroom, and an oven that had not been turned off. Despite years of searching, no family member was ever located, but their relatives can show you a burned out circle on the ground where they believed a spacecraft landed and spirited them away.”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

NASA Scientists Will Send This Robot Dog to Mars

Article by Kristin Houser                                       December 27, 2020                                    (freethink.com)

• So far, NASA has landed four rovers on Mars. But because they’ve all used wheels to move around, they’ve only been able to explore the parts of the planet that are relatively flat. The parts they can’t reach with a wheeled Mars rover, however, are some of the most enticing to explore. More than sixty researchers and engineers from NASA, CalTech, MIT, and other organizations built a robot dog that they think could be the ideal Mars rover for exploring those hard-to-reach areas.

• Mars is riddled with caves and lava tubes. Those underground structures could be the best places to look for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life. They could also be the key to human life surviving on Mars in the future. Martian colonists might be able to seek shelter underground, avoiding radiation, frigid temperatures, and meteorites that could jeopardize their safety on Mars’ surface.

• Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, “Spot”, became the possible answer. Spot already has an eclectic resume — it’s herded sheep in New Zealand, scouted factories for Ford, and even helped the NYPD during a recent hostage situation. While the robot dog is highly capable, it wasn’t ready for a job as a Mars rover right out of the gate. So the engineers made some modifications, which they presented during the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting on December 14th.

• They gave Spot a new sensor package, including a thermal camera and LiDaR (laser-scanning) sensor, and mounted a new power and computing package to its back. They also equipped the robot dog with AI software to help it learn as it explores, and a communication system it could use to send data from below ground to the surface. They renamed their newly upgraded robot dog “Au-Spot”, and it has already taken first place in a DARPA challenge that required it to navigate courses designed to look like underground urban environments.

• The researchers are currently testing the robot’s ability to navigate obstacle courses and map outdoor locations similar to the subterranean structures of Mars, such as the lava tubes found in Northern California. NASA hasn’t announced any impending plans to send Au-Spot to the Red Planet. But Au-Spot’s behaviors could one day enable revolutionary scientific missions to take place on the Martian surface and subsurface.

 

Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot has an eclectic resume — it’s herded sheep in New Zealand, scouted factories for Ford, and even helped the NYPD during a recent hostage situation.

However, the multi-talented bot’s next job might be the most remarkable yet: exploring Mars for NASA.

Limitations of a Wheeled Mars Rover

NASA has landed four rovers on Mars so far, and because they’ve all used wheels to move around, they’ve only been able to explore the parts of the planet that are relatively flat.

Scientists want to be able to scope out the entire planet, though — and the parts they can’t reach with a wheeled Mars rover are some of the most enticing.

Mars is riddled with caves and lava tubes, and those underground structures could be the best places to look for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life.

They could also be the key to human life surviving on the Red Planet in the future — Martian colonists might be able to seek shelter underground, avoiding some of the radiation, frigid temperatures, and meteorites that could jeopardize their safety on Mars’ surface.

Now, more than 60 researchers and engineers from NASA, CalTech, MIT, and other organizations have built a Spot robot dog they think could be the ideal Mars rover for exploring those subsurface structures.

The Roving Robot Dog

While Boston Dynamics’ robot dog is already highly capable, it wasn’t exactly ready for a job as a Mars rover right out of the box, so the researchers had to make some modifications, which they presented during the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) annual meeting on December 14.

11:43 minute video of Au-Spot, NASA’s robot dog (‘Thomas Touma’ YouTube)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Large Blue UFO Seen Above Oahu Appeared to Drop Into Ocean

Article by Allyson Blair                                   December 31, 2020                                    (hawaiinewsnow.com)

• On Tuesday night December 29th, “Moriah”, a 38 year old women from Nanakuli, Hawaii (on the western side of Oahu), spotted a bright blue elongated object in the sky around 8:30 pm. She called her husband, and the two of them jumped in the car to follow the object. “I don’t know what it was,” said Moriah. “This one was going so fast.” (see 10:42 minute video below)

• After following the blue light for three miles, they reached the ocean water where they saw the object drop out of the sky and into the ocean. Moriah described it as being larger than a telephone pole but she never heard it make a sound. “We called 911,” Moriah said. When the police arrived, Moriah and the officers spotted a second light. This time it was a smaller white orb “coming in the same direction as the blue one”. But they lost sight of the after it passed behind a nearby mountain.

• An FAA spokesperson, Ian Gregor, said the agency received a report from police Tuesday night about a possible plane down in the area “but had no aircraft disappear off radars. And no reports of overdue or missing aircraft.” A spokesperson for the Honolulu police said they had no further information on whatever fell into the ocean.

• Multiple witnesses reported seeing the large blue object fall out of the sky and into the ocean, and there are multiple videos of what appears to be a glowing‚ oblong mass — both in the sky and in the water. Moriah has had a couple days to think about it, but she is still baffled by what she saw. “To this day I don’t know,” she said laughing. “If you guys can find out what it was, I’d like know…”

 

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) – An unidentified flying object spotted in the evening sky over Leeward Oahu prompted witnesses to call 911 on Tuesday.

The sighting happened about 8:30 p.m.

There are multiple videos of what appears to be a glowing‚ oblong mass — both in the sky and in the water.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration say there were no aircraft incidents or accidents in this area at the time. But multiple witnesses reported seeing a large blue object fall out of the sky and into the ocean.

In a one video a woman can be heard saying, “Something is in the sky. What is that?”

Misitina Sape told Hawaii News Now she captured the image at 8:26 p.m. near Haleakala Avenue in Nanakuli.

Not long after, a woman named Moriah spotted what looked like the same object passing over Princess Kahanu Estates.

“I look up and then I was like oh s***!,” she said. “I started calling my husband and them because they were all in the garage. I was like hey. Come look up there. See if you see what I see. They all said yea!”

The 38-year-old says she’s never really been a believer in UFOs, but the bright blue object had them so intrigued they jumped in the car and started following it.

10:42 minute video of blue UFO over Oahu, Hawaii Dec 29, 2020 (‘Popcorned Planet” YouTube)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Alien Life on Mars Could Help Humans in Space Exploration

Article by Kirill Kurevlev                                 December 27, 2020                                       (sputniknews.com)

• NASA plans to land the Perseverance rover on Mars in February 2021. The agency plans to return US astronauts to the surface of the Moon by the end of 2024, and a manned mission to Mars by the early 2030s. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is determined to land humans on Mars and start a colony by 2026.

• “[M]icrobial life is [what] we’re most likely to find within our solar system,” states NASA’s chief scientist, Dr. James Green. “Intelligent life we may find outside of our solar system…” Dr. Green, believes that the discovery of even microbial life on planets like Mars may allow future astronauts to be genetically engineered into being able to live in the same environments. Dr. Green says that the discovery of life in the Solar System – any life – would completely change the worldview of mankind.

• Studying life that has evolved in an environment completely different from Earth would provide an example of how they’ve developed mechanisms to survive in it. Says Dr. Green, “[I]f we’re able to crack the concept of being able to live and grow using, using new changes in our DNA structure that maybe other life forms have really done, then we can go anywhere in the galaxy we want to, I mean, it just opens up everything!”

 

                     Dr. James Green

For many years of manned missions, scientists have been searching for other planets and moons that could be suitable for human life. However, most of them present very harsh conditions for us. The problem may be solved with a little help from Martians.

American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chief scientist, Dr. James Green, believes that the discovery of life on other Solar System planets, like Mars, may allow future astronauts to be genetically engineered into being able to live in the same environments, Green said in a podcast of “Gravity Assist”.

According to the scientist, studying life that has evolved in an environment completely different from Earth would provide an example of how they’ve developed mechanisms to survive in it.

“[…] if we’re able to crack that, if we’re able to crack the concept of being able to live and grow using, using new changes in our DNA structure that maybe other life forms have really done, then we can go anywhere in the galaxy we want to, I mean, it just opens up everything!”, the physicist stated.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

“Earth to Earth” Space Travel With Supersonic Airliners

Article by Thomas Burghardt                                        December 26, 2020                                    (nasaspaceflight.com)

• The future of ‘Earth to Earth’ commercial transportation in the 2020’s appears to lie in two alternatives: ‘suborbital flights’ which fly above the official American boundary of space at 80 kilometers altitude, and ‘supersonic aircraft’ that stay within the Earth’s atmosphere. The suborbital craft will get you there faster (arriving anywhere on Earth in under an hour), while the supersonic aircraft will get you there safer. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are the only two companies flying humans into space today.

• The CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, developed the suborbital flight concept in 2017 to transport large payloads to Mars for colonization. By attaching additional ‘Raptor engines,’ the ‘Starship’ craft’s launch system is also able to transport cargo – and eventually passengers – suborbitally from one place to another on Earth without the need for the ‘Super Heavy’ booster rocket (which is required to push the Starship craft fully into space). Test flights of the suborbital Starship system could begin in 2022.

• Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic’s ‘SpaceShipTwo’ is another suborbital craft flying in lower Earth orbit. The spacecraft is carried into the upper atmosphere by piggy-backing on a larger airplane and launches from there. Virgin Galactic and its manufacturing partner, Scaled Composites (a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman), plan to develop a next generation version of SpaceShipTwo (‘SpaceShipThree’?) to provide suborbital trans-continental spaceflights for passengers once it has proven itself with cargo flights.

• Astra is another spacecraft company that has plans to conduct Earth-to-Earth suborbital cargo transportation using its ‘Rocket 3’ design, possibly beginning in 2022.

• Boom Supersonic rolled out its ‘XB-1’ prototype supersonic aircraft in November 2020. It plans to develop its supersonic passenger airliner, ‘Overture’, in 2021, and plans to be operational – carrying up to 88 passengers at ranges up to almost 5000 miles – by 2029. Both Japan Airlines and the Virgin Group have placed orders for the Overture craft. Notwithstanding, Virgin Galactic recently unveiled a partnership with Rolls-Royce to develop its own supersonic aircraft capable of Mach 3, with a passenger capacity of up to 19 people.

• Aerion Supersonic, with headquarters in Melbourne, Florida (just south of Space Force station Cape Canaveral), is developing its ‘AS2 Supersonic Business Jet’, in partnership with Boeing and General Electric. It is designed to carry up to 10 passengers at speeds up to Mach 1.4.

• Both hypersonic suborbital space travel and supersonic atmospheric flight methods produce sonic booms. Supersonic aircraft produce sonic booms along the entire flight path. (This contributed to the demise of the Aérospatiale and the Concorde supersonic craft.) Rockets, on the other hand, only cause audible sonic booms during landing. The shockwaves created during a rocket launch move upwards and away from any observers to hear them.

• Aside from sonic booms, rockets will produce potentially dangerous noise levels and ‘blast danger areas’ during launch, especially those on the scale of SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy booster. Companies such as SpaceX plan to solve this by launching and landing far offshore from population centers, which will require additional transportation between the spaceport and the destination city. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division is developing the ‘X-59 QueSST’ (Quiet Supersonic Technology) for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration Program, to decrease the intensity of the supersonic shockwave so as not to disturb populated areas. Test flights for the X-59 are scheduled to begin in 2023 to inform legislation on approving supersonic air travel over populated areas.

• A safety advantage that winged aircraft have over propulsively landed rockets is the ability to glide in the event of an engine failure. These new supersonic airliners and spaceplane concepts are designed to be able to glide towards a controlled emergency landing. Vehicles which rely on their engines to land safely, such as Starship, do not have this contingency.

• The costs of space launches and the limited capacity on supersonic airliners will mean higher ticket prices. Will the appeal of shorter travel time outweigh the increased price? Some vehicles, such as Blue Origin‘s New Shepard rocket or Virgin Galactic’s own SpaceShipTwo, cater to ‘space tourists’ who will book a flight just to experience high speed air travel or suborbital spaceflight. They may even opt for a ticket on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Starship craft to experience low orbit space.

• Companies developing suborbital and supersonic commercial craft are also conscious of their carbon footprint. Their engines are designed to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as is emitted by the flight system, to achieve ‘carbon neutrality’. SpaceX’s ‘Starship Mars’ is designed to capture methane on Mars in order to refuel the craft for its return trip to Earth.

 

                SpaceX’s ‘Starship’

Commercial spaceflight companies are preparing to enter a new market: suborbital flights from one place to

        Virgin Galactic’s ‘Spaceship Two’

another on Earth. Aiming for fast transportation for passengers and cargo, these systems are being developed by a combination of established companies, such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, and new ones like Astra.

Technical and business challenges lie ahead for this new frontier, and an important piece is the coming wave of supersonic aircraft which could offer safer but slower alternatives to spaceflight. These two different approaches could face off in the 2020s to be the future of transportation on Earth.
(Lead image via Mack Crawford for NSF/L2)

Suborbital space travel

        Astra’s ‘Rocket 3’

The most prevalent concept for suborbital Earth to Earth transportation comes from none other than Elon Musk and

     Boom Supersonic’s ‘XB-1’ prototype

SpaceX. Primarily designed for transporting large payloads to Mars for the purpose of colonization, the next generation Starship launch system offers a bonus capability for transporting large amounts of cargo around Earth.

Musk first presented this idea in 2017, envisioning suborbital spaceflights between spaceports offshore from major cities. These launch and landing facilities would be far enough to reduce the disruption of rocket launch noise levels and sonic booms produced by landing vehicles, connected to land by a high speed form of transportation such as speedboats or a hyperloop.

Originally, these Earth to Earth flights were expected to use both stages of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) rocket, since evolved and renamed to the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster. In 2019, Musk revealed that these suborbital flights could instead utilize only the Starship vehicle with no booster, achievable for distances of approximately 10,000 kilometers or less. In order to meet thrust requirements, a single stage suborbital Starship would include an additional two to four Raptor engines.

              Boom Supersonic’s ‘Overture’
Aerion Supersonic‘s ‘AS2 Supersonic Business Jet’

Given the inherent danger of rocket powered space travel, the Starship system will complete many, possibly hundreds of flights before flying passengers, with the first Earth to Earth test flights beginning as early as 2022.

Another side effect of the Starship Mars architecture, which requires that methane be captured from Martian resources to refuel spacecraft and return to Earth, is that the same propellant production processes can be used on Earth to make Starship operations carbon neutral.

The idea of carbon neutrality, removing as much carbon from the atmosphere as is emitted by the system, is a crucial part of ensuring that future transportation systems do not contribute to the harmful effects of climate change. Musk has confirmed that carbon neutrality is an important goal of the Starship program.

        Lockheed Martin’s ‘X-59 QueSST’

SpaceX is not the only major commercial spaceflight company with a suborbital transportation concept. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic also has a vision of space travel around Earth. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon flying astronauts to Low Earth Orbit, and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo flying crew on suborbital trajectories above the official American boundary of space at 80 kilometers altitude, are the only two commercial companies actively flying humans to space today. A successor to SpaceShipTwo is planned that could provide trans-continental spaceflights for passengers.

While no technical details of a “SpaceShipThree” have been announced by Virgin Galactic, it is fairly likely that the vehicle would be air launched, similar to the SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplanes. SpaceShipThree was originally intended to be a orbital vehicle, developed jointly by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Lifting the Lid on Britain’s Most Famous Alien Encounter

Article by Nick Pope                                         December 25, 2020                                          (thescottishsun.co.uk)

• Forty years ago, in the early hours of December 26, 1980, that three men from the US Air Force security police based at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England saw the strange flashing lights deep in the adjacent Rendlesham Forest. They figured that an aircraft might have crashed, so they drove out to investigate and help. As the track of road narrowed, they were forced to continue on foot. Two of the men, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston, advanced into a small clearing, brightly lit by the strange lights. As they got closer, they realized it was not a crashed aircraft but a landed UFO.

• The object was triangular, ten feet wide at the base, resting on three legs. It looked like a cross between a small stealth fighter and a lunar landing module. And the only way into the clearing was from above. Penniston was trained in aircraft recognition and this was like nothing he had ever seen. Symbols on the side looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs. The photos that Penniston took “did not come out”. But his drawings of the craft and his accompanying notes have survived (see below). The craft took off vertically and he noted: “Speed — impossible.”

• Two nights later on December 28, 1980, the UFO returned. The witnesses on this night included the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt who led a team into the forest to investigate. Halt recorded his observations on a cassette tape. On tape, Halt is heard remarking about the UFO ahead: “It’s definitely coming this way . . . pieces of it are shooting off . . . this is weird.” The UFO appeared overhead and fired a thin beam of light in front of them. Halt later asked himself: “Was this a weapon, was this a warning, was this communication?” Burroughs and Penniston later reported health issues, which they attributed to the UFO sighting.

• Later it was claimed that the UFO was seen firing light beams into a storage area where nuclear weapons were kept. In 2015, Colonel Halt acquired statements from two military radar operators, Ike Barker and Jim Carey. They confirmed that the UFO was tracked on radar, traveling at thousands of miles an hour then stopping over the base. “It wasn’t like any radar target I have seen,” Barker said. (see previous ExoArticle on the radar operator’s story) Radioactivity at the site was also said to be “significantly higher than the average background”. Halt concluded that the craft was clearly under intelligent control.

• British and American defense chiefs conspired to keep the incident secret. But in 1983, Lord Hill-Norton, formerly Britain’s most senior military officer, asked a series of questions about the Rendlesham Forest incident in Parliament. Hill-Norton stated that either the deputy commander of an operational, nuclear-armed NATO base was hallucinating – or there had been an actual UFO landing.

• In 1997, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was at a charity function with the socialite Georgina Bruni. When Bruni asked Thatcher about UFOs and the Rendlesham Forest incident, Thatcher replied: “You must have the facts, (but) you can’t tell the people.” Bruni believed that Thatcher had been spooked by secret intelligence regarding UFOs.

• In 2006, the MoD declassified a top-secret assessment of the overall UFO phenomenon, code-named ‘Project Condign’. In the final report, it stated that “several observers were probably exposed to UAP radiation for longer than normal UAP-sighting periods”. This information was passed along to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and a confidential claim settlement was reached with at least one of the US Air Force personnel at Rendlesham.

 

       John Burroughs and Jim Penniston

It was in the early hours of December 26, 1980, that three men from the US Air Force security police

                Charles Halt

based at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, saw the strange flashing lights.

Coming from beyond the perimeter fence, in Rendlesham Forest, they figured an aircraft might have crashed. They drove out to investigate and help.
As the track narrowed, they continued on foot.

They were walking into history.

John Burroughs and Jim Penniston advanced into a small clearing, brightly lit by the strange lights. As they got closer, they realised it was not a crashed aircraft — it was a landed UFO.

               sculpture of UFO craft

The object was triangular, ten feet wide at the base, looked like a cross between a small stealth fighter and a lunar landing module, and was resting on three legs.

The only way into the clearing for a vehicle was from above.

Penniston was trained in aircraft recognition and this was like nothing he had ever seen. Symbols on the side looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs.

     Jim Penniston’s drawing of the craft

He took photos but was later told they did not come out. But he sketched the craft too, and his drawing has survived. He also took notes. The craft took off vertically and he wrote: “Speed — impossible.”

Two nights later the UFO returned and the witnesses then included the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt. A sceptic, he led a team into the forest when he was told the UFO had come back.

            Lord Hill-Norton

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

He recorded his observations on a cassette. It makes eerie listening as Halt catches sight of the UFO and says: “It’s definitely coming this way . . . pieces of it are shooting off . . . this is weird.”

Then the UFO appeared overhead and fired a thin beam of light in front of them.

                   Margaret Thatcher

Shocked Halt later asked himself: “Was this a weapon, was this a warning, was this communication?”

Later the UFO was seen firing light beams into a storage area, where many claim — though this was never confirmed — that nuclear weapons were kept.

In 2015, Colonel Halt, who has pursued the case, acquired statements from two military radar operators, Ike Barker and Jim Carey.

They confirmed the UFO was tracked, travelling at thousands of miles an hour then stopping over the base.

Georgina Bruni

“It wasn’t like any radar target I have seen,” Barker said.

Halt concluded that the craft, “was clearly under intelligent control”.

Radioactivity at the site was said to be, “significantly higher than the average background”.

  article’s writer, Nick Pope

Defence chiefs conspired to keep the incident secret.

But in 1983 the News of The World printed details.

Then Lord Hill-Norton, formerly Britain’s most senior military officer, asked a series of questions about the incident in Parliament.

He stated that either the deputy commander of an operational, nuclear-armed Nato base was hallucinating — or there had been a UFO landing.

The second establishment figure to break ranks was former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was at a charity function in 1997 with the socialite Georgina Bruni, who had a long-standing interest in UFOs.

Bruni asked Baroness Thatcher about UFOs and Rendlesham and she replied: “You must have the facts and you can’t tell the people.” Bruni believed Thatcher had been spooked by a secret about UFOs.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Space X Starship Tests, Super Heavy Flights Ramping Up in Texas

Article by Darrell Etherington                                   December 24, 2020                               (techcrunch.com)

• On Christmas Eve, SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk tweeted that the company would employ both of its two launch pads in Boca Chica, Texas simultaneously to test its prototype ‘Starship’, and will begin flight testing its ‘Super Heavy’ booster rocket (formerly called the ‘Big Falcon Rocket’) – starting with low-altitude “hops” – within a few months.

• SpaceX’s ‘Super Heavy’ is the booster rocket that will fly the Starship craft into orbital launches and propel Starship to deep space toward destinations including Mars. At 240 feet tall, Super Heavy will include 28 Raptor engines to provide it with the lift capacity needed to break Earth’s gravity when it’s stacked with a Starship loaded down with cargo (illustrated above)

• SpaceX is currently undergoing ground tests on its SN9 Starship prototype at Pad B at its Texas facility on the Gulf of Mexico, before beginning its flight testing. SpaceX successfully flew its predecessor, SN8, to an altitude of around 40,000 feet, and executed a crucial ‘belly flop’ maneuver that will be used to help control the powered landing. But SN8 was destroyed when it touched down harder than expected.

• The fact that the wo rockets will be stood up next to each other on Pad A and Pad B at the Boca Chica site indicates the pace of these test flights might speed up to match the fast clip at which SpaceX is constructing new rocket iterations.

 

      SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk

SpaceX is set to significantly ramp up its Starship development program in the new year, in more ways

           Boca Chica, Texas

than one. SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Thursday that the company will seek to make use of both of its two launch pads at its development facility in Boca Chica, Texas with prototype rockets set up on each, and that it will begin flight testing its Super Heavy booster (starting with low-altitude “hops”) as quickly as “a few months” from now.

Recently, SpaceX set up its SN9 prototype of Starship (the ninth in the current series) at Pad B at its Texas testing facility, which is on the Gulf of Mexico. SN9 will be next to undergo active testing, after SpaceX successfully flew its predecessor SN8 to an altitude of around 40,000 feet, and then executed a crucial belly flop maneuver that will be used to help control the powered landing of the production version. SN8 was destroyed when it touched down harder than expected, but SpaceX still achieved all its testing goals with the flight — and more.

                        SpaceX ‘Starship’

SN9 will now undergo ground tests before hopefully doing its own flight test later on. That’ll provide the team with even more valuable data to carry on to further tests — with the ultimate goal of eventually achieving orbit with a Starship prototype vehicle. Musk’s tweet that two prototypes will be stood up next to each other on Pad A and Pad B at the Boca Chica site could indicate the pace of these test flights might speed up, to match the fast clip at which SpaceX is constructing new rocket iterations.

Meanwhile, news that Super Heavy could be undergoing testing soon is also reason to get excited about 2021 for SpaceX and Starship. Super Heavy is the booster that SpaceX will eventually use to fly Starship for orbital launches, and to eventually help propel it to deep space — for destinations including Mars. Super Heavy will be around 240 feet tall, and will include 28 Raptor engines to provide it with the lift capacity needed to break Earth’s gravity when it’s stacked with a Starship loaded down with cargo.

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

UFOs or ‘Festive Ghosts’ of WWI Soldiers?

Article by Berny Torre                                    December 24, 2020                                  (dailystar.co.uk)

• In the winter of 1922/23, five years after the end of World War I, scores of villagers in Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, England saw “multi-coloured” lights floating over the nearby hills. This was reported in the local Banbury Guardian newspaper in February 1923.

• Mysterious lights believed to be the festive ghosts of World War I soldiers were in fact aliens, a police detective has claimed. Amateur UFO researcher Richard Rokeby says that, “Following the First World War desperate families wanted to believe that there is a hope of communicating with their lost sons again. Therefore, it would be natural at this time to assign any strange phenomena to ghosts and spirits.” The local authorities attributed the bright orbs moving over the hills as ‘marsh gas’ or ‘Will O’ the Wisps’.

• In his book: The Lights Upon The Hills, Rokeby writes: “[I]f we look at these events through modern eyes, it is very clear that what they are witnessing is an historic Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon event,” where the phenomenon seen were actually extraterrestrial craft. Rokeby notes that explanations that the orbs were simply ‘marsh gas’ is not credible because the lights reportedly spooked horses and exerted “downward pressure”.

• “What we have here is multiple witnesses saying that they saw strange lights in the sky and above the ground moving in ways that modern aircraft find very difficult to do today,” writes Rokeby. “I firmly believed that what was actually being witnessed here was a mass …multi-witnessed, extraterrestrial encounter and that these encounters may have been happening for hundreds years, are still happening today and perhaps a large event is going to occur there again and very soon!”

• Top British flying saucer investigator Philip Mantle, who published Rokeby’s book, said: “The story of these sightings in 1923 is so unique that I simply had to publish it. …I personally have been involved in UFO research for over 40 years and it never ceases to amaze me, especially when cases like this land on my desk.”

 

Mysterious lights believed to be the festive ghosts of World War One soldiers were in fact aliens, a police detective has claimed.

                        Philip Mantle

Scores of villagers started to see spooky orbs floating over hills near Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, in December 1922.

The sightings were attributed to a natural phenomenon known as marsh gas or Will O’ the Wisps by a local newspaper.

But amateur UFO researcher Richard Rokeby has penned a book, The Lights Upon The Hills, where he claims the witness accounts show they were actually ETs.

The married dad-of-three wrote: “Following the First World War desperate families wanted to believe that there is a hope of communicating with their lost sons again.

“Therefore, it would be natural at this time to assign any strange phenomena to ghosts and spirits.

“But as we will see if we look at these events through modern eyes, it is very clear that what they are witnessing is an historic Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon event.”

Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, England

He told of how several sightings of “multi-coloured” lights moving at speed were reported by the Banbury Guardian in February 1923.

And insisted the paper’s explanation was not “credible” as the lights reportedly spooked horses and exerted “downward pressure”.

The author wrote: “What we have here is multiple witnesses saying that they saw strange lights in the sky and above the ground moving in ways that modern aircraft find very difficult to do today.

“I firmly believed that what was actually being witnessed here was a mass Unidentified Flying Object ( UFO) or Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP) event.

“Therefore, over the course of this book I hope to show that what was seen in the winter of 1922-23 was not ghosts or marsh gas, but was in fact a well documented, multi-witnessed, extraterrestrial encounter and that these encounters may have been happening for hundreds years, are still happening today and perhaps a large event is going to occur there again and very soon!”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

NASA is Sending Spiders to Space

Article by Kristen Currie and Eric Henrikson                                       December 21, 2020                                         (krqe.com)

• When it comes to arachnids, NASA scientists noticed that a spider’s web tends to be lopsided with the center slightly displaced towards the upper edge. Also, while resting, spiders tend to point their heads down towards gravity to get to their prey faster.

• NASA wanted to know what a spider would do without gravity. Would the middle of the web be more centered? Would a spider still face down in a zero-gravity environment? So astronauts on the International Space Station did an experiment. They put a few spiders to the test and found that in the absence of gravity, the spider’s webs tended to be more symmetrical and their body position more variable.

• Without gravity, spiders used light as a way to orient themselves. They found that the webs built under lamp light, as opposed to in darkness, were like those build on Earth under the influence of gravity. (see 2:10 minute video on space spiders below)

 

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Have you ever noticed that a spider’s web tends to be lopsided? Often times, the center is slightly displaced towards the upper edge. And while resting, spiders tend to point their heads down – towards gravity – to get to their prey faster.

Well NASA scientists noticed both characteristics and wanted to know – what would a spider do without gravity? Would the middle of the web be more centered? Would a spider still face down in a zero-gravity environment?

After a couple mishaps on board the International Space Station, astronauts put a few spiders to the test. They found that in the absence of gravity, the spider’s webs tended to be more symmetrical and their body position more variable.

The scientists took it a step further observing that without gravity, spiders used light as a way to orient themselves. When comparing darkness to lamplight, they found that the webs built under light were like those build on Earth under the influence of gravity.

2:10 minute video on NASA sending spiders to space (‘KXAN’ YouTube)

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

The Story That Changed Our Perception of UFOs

Article by Duncan Phenix                                    December 18, 2020                                   (krqe.com)

• Three years ago on December 17, 2017, the New York Times published a story that is still reverberating through UFO circles and government agencies. (see ExoArticle here) The report revealed the existence of a program called AATIP – Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program – and included a video of a “Tic Tac” UFO taken in 2004 by a Navy pilot from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off of the coast of Southern California. The US Navy acknowledged the video as authentic in May of 2019.

• The “Tic Tac” video captured the imagination of the UFO community and the public. But it was the report that the government spent $22 million studying UFOs that pulled the media into the story and allowed the UFO topic to gain a foothold in the mainstream media. UFOs were no longer exclusively the butt of jokes.

• In July of 2020, the Times printed another article about the government’s role investigating UAPs, and the Pentagon’s new program called the UAP Task Force, run out of Naval Intelligence. This was revealed when Senator Marco Rubio included the language of the request in the 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act.

 

                Fmr Senator Harry Reid

MYSTERY WIRE — Three years ago this week, the New York Times posted a story on its website that is still reverberating through UFO circles and government agencies.

The report revealed the existence of a program called AATIP – Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program – and it put a video into the public eye 13 years after an encounter with a UFO was captured during a military mission off the coast of Southern California.

               image of ‘Tic Tac’ UFO

The “Tic Tac” video, which the U.S. Navy acknowledged as authentic in May of 2019, captured the imagination of the UFO community and the public. The video shows an object that a Navy pilot launched from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz had described in an up-close encounter.

But it was the report that the government spent $22 million studying UFOs, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid‘s involvement, that pulled the media into the story.

Since the report, media attention to the UFO topic has gained a foothold in mainstream reporting. It was no longer exclusively the butt of jokes in the media.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Ahmet Zappa Shares Story of Frank Zappa’s UFO

Article by Tim Peacock                                     December 21, 2020                                           (udiscovermusic.com)

• In a recent episode of ‘Beyond The Bus’ for uDiscover Music, Frank Zappa’s son, Ahmet Zappa tells about his rock star father’s and Navy officer grandfather’s brush with a UFO and UFO technology. (see 5:17 minute video below)

• Ahmet explains that his maternal grandfather was US Navy Captain John Klein Sloatman II. ‘Captain Jack’ had helped pioneer the first atomic submarine. And he claims to have been at Area 51 “during a UFO crash landing”. What is a Navy captain doing at the Air Force/CIA facility Area 51?

• When Captain Jack met ultra-progressive guitarist Frank Zappa, they had little in common until they discovered a mutual interest in science. “My dad …was always dreaming up future technologies” says Ahmet. “[W]hen he was introduced to my grandfather… they started talking about aliens. [T]hey even devised a plan to build an anti-gravitational machine. A UFO! In the late 60s! For the low, low price of $7000.”

• Ahmet believes the putative UFO could still be built. “Somewhere in our (family) vaults there is a book with all the writing and all of the plans to build this UFO someday,” Ahmet reveals. “If we can ever find enough manpower to go through this extensive vault we might actually be able to publish and maybe even build this UFO for once and for all. That would be awesome!”

 

                          Frank Zappa

Ahmet Zappa is the latest star to appear in uDiscover Music’s animated video series, ‘Beyond The Bus’.

Filmed exclusively for uDiscover Music, ‘Beyond The Bus’ has already showcased tales of ribald rock’n’roll

               Ahmet Zappa

revelry from Eagles Of Death Metal’s Jesse Hughes, irrepressible Aussie rockers Airbourne and Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown. Indeed, it’s fair to say that only bands with an unquenchable thirst for the road and the more exotic fare available at rock’s top table are likely to be immortalized in this series.

A man with an impeccable pedigree, Ahmet Zappa is of course the son of the legendary Frank Zappa and in this special episode of ‘Beyond The Bus’ he reveals what he calls “a really, really bizarre story” with possible extra-terrestrial links concerning both his father and his grandfather. You can watch Ahmet reveal all in full below, but firstly, if you read on you can enjoy him giving you a flavor of this truly phenomenal tale.

Captain John Klein Sloatman II

“My mother was the daughter of John Klein Sloatman II, a captain in the US navy”, Ahmet says. “Basically, Captain Jack was James Bond. He helped pioneer the first atomic submarine and he’s credited with keeping our aircraft carriers in the water. One of the more fascinating stories is that my grandfather was at Area 51 during the “UFO crash landing”.”

Understandably, you may wonder exactly what a captain in the US navy was doing in the desert with aliens or how it relates to Frank Zappa. As Ahmet reveals, however, science was one of the first things that his distinguished grandfather and his esteemed father had in common.

“My Dad was someone who memorized the encyclopedia and he was always dreaming up future technologies” he says.

“He was a mutant, a superhero and when he was introduced to my grandfather – boom! They started talking about aliens and they even devised a plan to build an anti-gravitational machine. A UFO! In the late 60s, for the low, low price of $7000.”

But why would Frank have wanted a UFO of his own? If you watch the video in full, you’ll find out – and you’ll also discover why it never quite came to fruition. For all that, Ahmet believes the putative UFO could still be built.

5:17 minute video of Frank Zappa’s son Ahmet revealing Frank’s UFO tale (‘uDiscover Music’ YouTube)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Milky Way is Littered with Dead Alien Civilizations

Article by Charlotte Edwards                                   December 21, 2020                                      (thesun.ie)

• A study has been published to the arXiv database that models the evolution of the Milky Way since its estimated beginning, around 13 billion years ago. Authored by three Caltech physicists and a high school student, the new model builds on the famous equation developed by SETI founder Frank Drake in the 1960s. Using astronomy and statistical modeling, the researchers estimated how much intelligent life could have lived – and died – within our Milky Way galaxy.

• The researchers looked at rocky earth-like planets outside our solar system that are near Sun-like stars, and considered whether there would have been a time period when life could have formed there – taking into account that intelligent beings typically end up destroying themselves. According to their model, intelligent life could have emerged 8 billion years after the Milky Way formed, in a region 13,000 light-years from the galactic center – which is half as far from the galactic center as Earth.

• The study suggests that early galactic civilizations reached their peak 5 billion years ago, but it is most likely they annihilated themselves due to something like nuclear war or climate change.

• The researchers are now waiting for their work to be peer reviewed.

• [Editor’s Note]  Okay. How is this disinformation? Let me count the ways. First, it is a study conducted by physicists at CalState in Pasadena, a town which is practically owned by the CIA. Their model was based on the highly conjectural ‘Drake Equation’ in which the number of possible intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, besides the Earth, ranges from millions to zero. This equation was arrived at by Frank Drake, who founded deep state-riddled SETI. Their new “study” promotes the theory that all other civilizations have died off from ‘nuclear war or climate change’, to bolster the public’s fear of climate change (as an excuse for many parts of the deep state’s agenda of fear and helplessness), and to promote the idea that we are most likely all alone in this galaxy. This study is only meant to propagate the deep state’s long-standing policy of preventing the public from knowing the truth – that our Milky Way galaxy is positively teeming with civilizations and a wide variety of species of intelligent beings, and our solar system is no exception.

 

Researchers used astronomy and statistical modelling to estimate how much intelligent life could have

                           Frank Drake

lived and died out in the Milky Way.

The study has been published to the arXiv database.

It builds on a famous 1960s equation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence founder Frank Drake created.

The new model was written by three Caltech physicists and a high school student.

It looks at when and where life is most likely to live in the universe and also takes into account the idea that intelligent beings seem to end up destroying themselves.

The researchers looked at rocky earth-like planets outside our Solar System that are near Sun-like stars.

Even if these planets are now un-habitable due to radiation or other factors, the scientists considered whether there would have been a time period when life could have formed there.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Building a 21st-Century Space Force

Article by John W. Raymond                                      December 20, 2020                                          (theatlantic.com)

• Just after World War II, the US military determined a need for a new independent Air Force military branch to compete with the Soviet Union in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and reconnaissance satellites, and opening the door for space exploration. Employing a lean, focused team, the US Air Force’s unique culture, identity, and focus allowed its leadership to envision and develop crucial technologies, including stealth, smart weapons and precise global navigation.

• In the past five years, the number of active satellites in orbit has grown from 1,250 to 3,400. By 2023, there will be about 5,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth. The Satellite Industry Association estimated the 2019 global space economy at $366 billion, and Morgan Stanley projects that revenues could top $1 trillion by 2040.

• During this period of explosive growth, Russia and China have made obvious their intention to challenge American preeminence in commercial and military space, raising the prospect of war beginning in, or extending into, space. Early in 2020, Russia positioned one of its satellites dangerously close to an American satellite and then instructed it to execute a series of provocative and unsafe maneuvers. By the summer, that Russian satellite backed away, released a target, and then fired a projectile at that target as a raw display of space combat power. We are still dealing with the fallout from China’s own 2007 anti-satellite test, which left a cloud of space debris that still must be carefully tracked to avoid collision with a wide array of spacecraft, including the International Space Station.

• To deal with these challenges, the United States created a 21st-century military branch, the Space Force. Only by staying lean, agile, and tightly focused can Space Force succeed. Speed is a hallmark of our deliberately lean new service to rapidly design, test, and employ new technologies and innovations. Space Force headquarters at the Pentagon will have about 600 military and civilian members in a building that houses more than 20,000 Defense Department employees. We’ve removed several layers of command structure and bureaucracy, and moved leaders closer to the front lines to shorten communication pathways. This is especially important for a service so heavily reliant on technology.

• Space Force’s creation came one year after the Pentagon crafted a new National Defense Strategy designed to pivot toward ‘great-power competition’, and away from the counterterrorism focus of the past two decades. Space Force’s goal is to enhance American military power as space systems assume an ever-greater role in the missions of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard which depend on space for navigation and communication to strike targets with precision and lethality. By staying lean and focused, Space Force can address the challenges that lie ahead, out-competing adversaries, deterring conflict, and keeping Americans safe.

• The article’s writer, General John W. Raymond, is the first chief of space operations for the United States Space Force.

 

                  Space Force personnel

Early in 2020, Russia positioned one of its satellites dangerously close to an American satellite and then instructed it to execute a series of provocative and unsafe maneuvers. This summer, that satellite backed away, released a target, and then conducted a weapons test, firing a projectile at that target. This raw display of space combat power was carefully designed as an act of intimidation, right out of the 1950s Soviet playbook.

Over the past five years, space has become a contested commercial and military realm. During that time,

             Gen. John W. Raymond

the number of active satellites in orbit has grown from 1,250 to 3,400. By 2023, there will be about 5,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth. The Satellite Industry Association estimated the 2019 global space economy at $366 billion, and Morgan Stanley projects that revenues could top $1 trillion by 2040. During this period of explosive growth, Russia and China have made obvious their intention to challenge American preeminence in commercial and military space and to prevent the U.S. from using its space capabilities in crisis and conflict, raising the prospect of war beginning in, or extending into, space. We are still dealing with the fallout from China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, which left a cloud of space debris that even today must be carefully tracked to avoid collision with a wide array of spacecraft, including the International Space Station. The consequences of a full-blown war in space would be far worse.

A year ago, to deal with these challenges, the United States created its first new independent military branch in more than half a century. The U.S. Space Force, which I am privileged to lead, is a new kind of service. The Space Force headquarters at the Pentagon will have about 600 military and civilian members in a building that houses more than 20,000 Defense Department employees. Only by staying lean, agile, and tightly focused on our mission can we succeed in protecting the United States.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Mark Hamill and James Gunn Band Together to ‘Sue’ Space Force

Article by Rebekah Barton                                        December 26, 2020                                    (insidethemagic.net)

• On December 18th at a White house event, Vice President Mike Pence announced that Space Force personnel would be called ‘Guardians’. The military branch already uses a symbol that looks a lot like the Star Trek logo. This caused an immediate backlash from Hollywood heavyweights such as James Gunn, the director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Gunn posted on Twitter: “Can we sue this dork?”

• Another Hollywood hero, Mark Hamill (Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker… pictured above) replied to Gunn’s tweet: “So they grab the “Guardians” from your movies, they use the “Force” from our movies… then they have the gall to just steal their logo from “Star Trek”? Let’s file a 3-way joint lawsuit & really nail these larcenous bastards! #MayTheDorksBeWithYou”

• Hamill’s response was clearly tongue-in-cheek, but the ironic nature of the situation is apparent: the logo really does look like Star Trek’s, the moniker obviously aligns with the Marvel movies Gunn directs, and the entire operation is being referred to as a “Force” — not ‘the Force’, but the point stands. The US Space Force responded with another tweet: “The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, ‘Guardians of the High Frontier’.”

• Hamill and Gunn are both very active on social media and their followers were quick to respond to their tweets about the US Space Force’s new name. Ian McAdam tweeted: “Would love to see a Disney versus American government lawyer battle.” MightyMary007 posted: “Disney is highly litigious from what I understand, so you’re already well-positioned to do so.” But most fans are still dumbstruck by Hamill’s incredible cameo in The Mandalorian Season 2 finale in which Hamill reprised his role as Luke Skywalker to rescue Grogu (ie: ‘baby Yoda’) with the help of de-aging CGI technology.

• No matter what your thoughts are about the United States Space Force ‘Guardians’ title, the social media exchange between two of fandom’s most famous names is hilarious. As of yet, Spock has not weighed in on the situation — we’ll keep you posted. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently in the works for 2023.

 

   Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars

If you’ve ever wanted to see a Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover, look no further than…

                    director, James Gunn

Twitter?

You read that right. Two of the respective Walt Disney Company franchises’ big guns — Mark Hamill and James Gunn — have taken to social media for an unlikely (and hilarious) reason.

When current United States Vice President Mike Pence announced that the uniformed members of the U.S. Space Force will be referred to as Guardians — with a symbol that looks very much like the Star Trek logo — Gunn almost immediately posted, “Can we sue this dork?,” obviously referring to the fact that the name “Guardians” clearly resembles Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

   Space Force’s logo, and Star Trek’s logo

Hamill wasted no time replying to Gunn’s Tweet, writing back: “So they grab the “Guardians” from your

               Mark Hamill

movies, they use the “Force” from our movies… then they have the gall to just steal their logo from “Star Trek”? Let’s file a 3-way joint lawsuit & really nail these larcenous bastards! #MayTheDorksBeWithYou”

Hamill’s response was clearly tongue-in-cheek, but the ironic nature of the situation is certainly apparent: the logo really does look like Star Trek’s, the name obviously aligns with the Marvel movies Gunn directs — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently in the works, likely for 2023 — and the entire operation is being referred to as a “force” — not the Force, but the point stands.

The U.S. Space Force’s official Tweet about their unintentionally amusing moniker reads:

The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, “Guardians of the High Frontier.”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Copyright © 2019 Exopolitics Institute News Service. All Rights Reserved.