FOIA: Report 'Vela Meteoriod Evaluation' by SRI International

SPECIAL_TECHNICAL_REPORT_2 JAN_29_1980.pdf
Report 'Vela Meteoriod Evaluation' by SRI International
A report titled 'Vela Meteoriod Evaluation' by SRI International for the 22 Sep 1979 Vela satellite event.
Document date: 1980-01-29
Department: SRI International
Author: George N. Oetzel, Steven C. Johnson
Document type: report
pages: 52


Archivist's Notes: Good quality document. 'Top Secret' mark crossed out to Unclassified. Copy 4 of a 50 page report. Additional label 'Special Technical Report 2'. Original classification downgraded 200-101-29.

This 52 page technical report is titled: “Vela Meteoroid Evaluation” by George N. Oetzel and Steven C. Johnson.
Prepared for Air Force Technical Applications Center Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. Dated: 29th January, 1980.

The type is easy to read and there is no blanked out sections.
Contents: Illustrations, tables, Introduction, Literature Survey, Optical Observations Expected from the Accepted Data Base, The Pioneer 10 Experiment, Comparison of Pioneer 10 Date with Vela Zoo, Conclusions, References.

document pg46 begins the conclusions: results of literature search, the MRC model, the Sandia model, comparison of Pioneer 10 and Vela, Summary.

Interesting to note:
Document pg 28 : “The probability calculations above lead one rapidly to the conclusion that there is no possibility that event 747 is meteoroid related. Unfortunately, they also lead rapidly to the conclusion that the observations made by Pioneer 10 are impossible…”

Document pg 48 : “The Pioneer 10 AMD provided no time histories. This omission is crucial for the evaluation of event 747, because we do not know whether any of the AMD observations resembled either a puzzling portion of the Vela zoo or the 747 time history”.

Document pg 48-49 contains the Summary: “In the limited time available for this study, we have not been able to reach a firm conclusion regarding the probability that event 747 was produced by a meteoroid encounter.” And “As a potential member of the zoo, event 747 has some very unusual properties. The rise time is exceptionally slow.
Events with two maxima are unusual. Events with both the amplitude and duration of event 747 are also unusual. The probability that all of these properties will occur simultaneously can be estimated from the data base. This effort is beyond the scope of the current study.”

This was another report to find the probability of sunlight reflecting off a meteoroid being the cause of the light flash that set off the Alert 747 Vela Incident, in which the Vela Satellite detected a suspected atmospheric nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean, south of Africa, on September 22, 1979.

This document was a bit of a snoozer, but I did find a few things interesting. One thing I was wondering is why they kept comparing the Pioneer 10 spacecraft to the Vela satellite in previous documents. The reason was given on page 29, were it states “The Pioneer 10 AMD (Asteroid/Meteoroid Detector) is strikingly similar in concept to the VELA bhangmeter system”, which is the instrument that detected the flash.

As frozen_snowman mentioned, earlier in the report it covered various meteoroid models from previous literature that contained data for velocity and size of meteoroids and when applied, found the probability of a meteoroid to be the source of the Veal flash was impossible. It would have required two meteoroids to produce the double flash that is seen with a nuclear explosion, and they would have to be milliseconds apart from each other. Unfortunately, when applying the same models to the Pioneer 10 impact, it also came to the conclusion that was also impossible, so it was ruled a false conclusion.

There is some detail about the AMD detector on page 30 that explains the reason for the discrepancy between models and direct observations.

In the conclusion, the reports states that trying to compare to the Pioneer 10 data would not provide the proper data because there are differences, and Pioneer 10 did not have time history data. Further investigation would have to rely on the Vela data itself.

Related FOIA Documents:
FOIA: Defense Technical Intelligence Report for the 22 Sep 1979 Vela Satellite event
FOIA: DCIA memo on the Sep 22, 1979 Vela Satellite event recording a suspected nuclear test
FOIA: A report by a panel of non-government scientists on the Sep 22, 1979 Vela satellite event

Related Links:
Wikipedia article on the Vela Incident

Now – on the light side of things…

On PDF page 38 2nd paragraph

….The main difficulty with the above explanation is that there are far too many zoo members with the general shape. If all meteoroid directions are equally….……

The following ‘layman’s’ picture jumped into my mind …



On another note: This event ‘supposedly’ happened off the cost of MADAGASCAR … now there is a connection



[edit on 28-11-2007 by frozen_snowman]

Well....

There would seem to be many possibilities. I, personally, see electrical phenomenon as being a possible culprit, as well.

But, the thing i wonder is what the heck do they mean by "zoo"?

Are they using a metaphor? Like calling the battlefield the "theater"?

Seems like it…
My understanding is that a ‘zoo event’ is an event of unknown nature where scientists have no explanation.

I also wondered why he used the wording: “there are far too many zoo members with the general shape”. Perhaps he was being humorous as well as scientific due to being sick of the whole Vela evaluations.

The following (in connection with particles) is from Fermilab Today:

Dave Toback, a Texas A&M University professor who works on the CDF experiment, says zoo events are rare by definition, but occur frequently enough to catalogue--like animals in a zoo.
"The idea is that you try and collect these animals so you can study them," he said. Toback uses a program called "ZooFinder" (originally named "PhysMon") that monitors collision data and e-mails him and other physicists when zoo events occur. "Every so often," he said, "we'll get other physicists together to try and look at the zoo.

For someone in work who can't distract the boss long enough to read 50+ pages... what does it all mean? I've not came across this subject before, what is it? Oh and obviously... Pardon my lack of understanding and time to root through the archives

Most interesting to me is the fact that they cannot interpret the Pioneer 10 data. I wonder how many hits they got of anomalous data from Pioneer 10.

The improbability was higer than the age of the universe for the occurance. They go to great lengths not to describe in any one place what they saw.

It would have been reasonable to ask "what would make two flashes of too long a duration, too close together in time to be asteroid reflection, moving at too slow a speed transiting across four sensors.

Their answer was (not an asteroid, mathematically impossible for an asteroid. So it must have been some aspect of asteroids we do not yet understand.)

That of course is ideocy! Or it is reality avoidance.

If it is not an asteroid it is within reason to speculate that it may have been something else, not yet recognized which is not an asteroid.

The extreme failure to consider the possability of "something else" suggests pattern recognition. You do not avoid mentioning what you do not recognize. So we know that "Something Else" was a taboo subject.

It would be most reasonable to include the consideration that they might have found a new phenomenon which was not asteroid related. No where is that conjecture allowed. Certainly when exploring space the opportunity for something new and unknown would be a great moment of revelation, not one to turn away from.

I understand technical people not speculating, but in this case the lack of mentioning the possability of "Other" is spectacular in it's absence.

They did speculate on the possability of "Other asteroid related" only.