Jun 24 1997
From The Space Library
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(New page: As the 50th anniversary of the alleged alien sighting neared, the U. S. Air Force released a 231-page report entitled The Roswell Report: Case Closed. The report explained that the U.S. Ai...)
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As the 50th anniversary of the alleged alien sighting neared, the U. S. Air Force released a 231-page report entitled The Roswell Report: Case Closed. The report explained that the U.S. Air Force had recovered test dummies from the Roswell, New Mexico, crash site in 1947, rather than the bodies of aliens. The U.S. Air Force had issued a report on the Roswell matter in 1994, in which researchers argued that the presumed spacecraft that had crashed in 1947 was actually an Air Force balloon used in a top-secret program called Project Mogul. When officials discovered evidence that the tests had used parachute dummies, however, the U.S. Air Force compiled an additional report with the new information. Military officials hoped that the Air Force's explanation for the supposed UFO reported in 1994, as well as for the supposed bodies of aliens discovered in the crash, would temper the controversy surrounding the issue. U.S. Air Force Colonel John Haynes, presiding over the Pentagon news conference at the release of the report, showed reporters footage of a NASA test craft that, indeed, resembled a flying saucer. Colonel Haynes explained that during testing in the 1950s, Air Force balloons had transported dummies to altitudes of 98,000 feet (29,900 meters), releasing them to fall to the ground. Since the testing was secret, the sight of falling dummies "easily could have been mistaken for something they were not.
In the most serious of a string of problems for the Russian Mir space station, the 7-ton (6,400- kilogram or 6.4-tonne) robotic cargo spacecraft Progress accelerated out of control while docking and crashed into Mir, damaging the Spektr module, tearing a solar-power array, and crumpling an exposed radiator. When the craft crashed into Mir, U.S. astronaut, British-born C. Michael Foale was inside the Spektr module, which he had been using as his sleeping and research quarters. Foale immediately abandoned the damaged module and slammed shut a hatch, sealing off the leaking Spektr. Spektr depressurized completely, and later the entire space station suffered a slight depressurization. When the collision occurred, Mir cosmonaut Vasili V. Tsibliyev was controlling the Progress manually, attempting to re-dock the craft, to test the updated manual-control system. The Progress had already docked with Mir a few days earlier, when the crew had unloaded cargo and filled the craft's hold with trash. In addition to damaging Mir, the collision temporarily jarred the station off its normal flying orbit. Although the crew quickly remedied this problem, the three-man team had to work inside a darkened, partially powered station. Russian and American space officials estimated that Mir had lost half of its operating power from the collision. The collision heightened tensions between Russian and American space officials, as questions mounted about the safety of the crew aboard the failing space station. U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology Chairperson F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) met with NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, urging NASA not to send American astronauts to Mir until the station's safety standards had improved significantly. Yuri N. Koptev, Director General of the Russian Space Agency, responded angrily to Sensenbrenner's suggestion.
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