The Kecksburg UFO Crash: December 9th, 1965

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
At any rate, I also would like to add that the chances of two bodies falling from space independently of each other within the same orbital arc on the same day.... well, I just feel the need to point out here as an amateur statistician

that the odds are getting very difficult to believe.

I'm not sure where to begin with your statement. First, there's no need to assume the 2 bodies were on anywhere near the same orbital trajectory. The Satellite that fell in the morning was in one orbit, the meteor, or whatever it was may have never been in orbit but just entered from space. And for all I know, the object at 4:45pm could have landed a hundred miles from Kecksburg, or not at all. When I say 2 objects fell from the sky that day, I am NOT assuming both fell in Kecksburg.

So if one assumes the 4:45pm object was a meteor, or alien spacecraft ejection pod, or whatever you like, only one non-manmade large object fell from the sky that day. The other was a manmade object and surely there's no statistical mystery about sending an object up and that same object coming back down, right? (possibly in more than one piece, or possibly there were launch vehicle components in orbit in addition to the Kosmos-96 satellite itself).

Now as for the statistics of bodies entering the Earth's atmosphere, you have a hard time believing 2 can fall the same day? What if I told you there were a million meteors in the Earth's atmosphere every day? Actually there are probably more than that:

en.wikipedia.org...

Millions of meteors occur in the Earth's atmosphere every day.

Now most of these are tiny micrometeors, where the only requirement is that they be significantly larger than an atom to be classified as such. So the vast majority of those will never produce any fireballs. The larger the object the lower the frequency of entering the Earth's atmosphere. There's even a formula for that:

The biggest asteroid to hit Earth on any given day is likely to be about 40 centimeters, in a given year about 4 meters, and in a given century about 20 meters. These statistics are obtained by the following:

Over at least the range from 5 centimeters (2 inches) to roughly 300 meters (1,000 feet), the rate at which Earth receives meteors obeys a power-law distribution (meaning there is no typical size in the conventional sense) as follows :

N( > D)=37D^(−2.7)

where N(>D) is the expected number of objects larger than a diameter of D meters to hit Earth in a year. This is based on observations of bright meteors seen from the ground and space, combined with surveys of near Earth asteroids. Above 300 meters in diameter, the predicted rate is somewhat higher, with a two-kilometer asteroid (one million-megaton TNT equivalent) every couple of million years — about 10 times as often as the power-law extrapolation would predict.

Now how many of those are large enough to produce a "fireball"?

A fireball is a brighter-than-usual meteor. The International Astronomical Union defines a fireball as "a meteor brighter than any of the planets" (magnitude -4 or greater).[6] The International Meteor Organization (an amateur organization that studies meteors) has a more rigid definition. It defines a fireball as a meteor that would have a magnitude of -3 or brighter if seen at zenith.

As in the meteor shower information I posted, 3000 meteors were seen between midnight and sunrise, and many of those qualified as "fireballs" based on those definitions. Granted, most nights we don't have meteor showers but the idea that more than one bright object can fall the same day should seem statistically possible even when there's no meteor shower.

Lastly, some of the best observational evidence we have for multiple impacts on the same day, is the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter in 1994, where a loosely bound collection of smaller comet chunks broke apart and all impacted the planet in a series one after the other. So when you have one object, we have a clear precedent that shows there could be more right behind it, that could fall later the same day.

en.wikipedia.org...

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ... was a comet that broke apart and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system objects.

I hope this is enough information for you to consider revising your statistical probabilities my friend!

Regards

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hi there Arby

I'm sorry you got so upset there, wonderful reply post! I agree fully with everything you said, and you laid out your case well!

I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say, sorry to put you through all of that effort for a misunderstanding.

Yes, I was assuming they were in the same orbital arc, or at least passed through the same window over Kecksburg. For the theory you were explaining to have worked (to my understanding) 2 independent objects (Cosmos 96 in the early morning hours while everyone was having coffee I think you said, and nobody noticed) and the alleged meteor later that day at 445 pm.

That's two independent events over the same window in the same day.

There is a lot of sky here on Earth for things to fall in. I'm not talking about micrometeorites here, the 445pm event was big enough for MANY people to witness, and respond to. Cosmos 96 (if it did go down in the early morning hours of the same day) would similarly be called an 'event' in my book.

Of course in Shoemaker-Levy (and in meteor showers) we see multiple hits in the same day, but those are from the same object (or at least the same source of objects).

What struck me (and IMHO is still a valid observation here) is that statistically for 2 independent bodies to fall in the same window in the same day sounds improbable. Not impossible mind you, but improbable.

As I recall, this isn't even your theory, just one you were testing out, right?

At any rate, I hope I made that more clear.

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
What struck me (and IMHO is still a valid observation here) is that statistically for 2 independent bodies to fall in the same window in the same day sounds improbable. Not impossible mind you, but improbable.

As I recall, this isn't even your theory, just one you were testing out, right?

I would say it's not even improbable.

You're right it's not my theory.

You mentioned NASA claimed the object recovered at Kecksburg was Cosmos-96.

What if some Kecksburg eyewitnesses also identified the object they saw at Kecksburg as Cosmos-96? Have you seen that?

That's what this video shows (This is part 5 in the series, there's a very small amount of background at the end of part 4 on this but the beginning of this video captures the essence of the witness object identification):



One more piece of evidence to consider.

[edit on 16-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Fair enough, I can't watch this at work, but I'll take a look when I get home this evening!

-WFA

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hi there Arby! i watched the video, and it appears that the witnesses were describing an object similar to the Venera Capsule.

UNTIL I did some digging...

remember earlier in the thread, where I cited that the booster had separated from the capsule upon orbital insertion?

This means that the booster debris is not the object tracked in the NASA and US Space Command reports, it was the capsule that they tracked...

It seems that Oberg in fact first theorized that the Kecksburg event might have been Kosmos, after hearing the eyewitness reports, seeking a connection:

"In 1993, skeptic James Oberg suggested that what happened at Kecksburg was not a UFO crash and was not a meteor. Instead, Oberg reported that it could have been the capsule from Kosmos-96, a Venus space probe, which had failed shortly after launch. It was shaped something like an acorn, which fit the shape reported by Bulebush and Romansky. In his 1993 article for Omni magazine, Oberg notes that the orbital data did not support it but he also noted that data could have been for the booster rocket and not the capsule"

home.comcast.net...

" The released tracking data couldn't be positively identified with specific pieces of the failed probe. It could have been the jettisoned rocket stage or a large piece of space junk. The probe itself could have been headed off toward Kecksburg. (Oberg UFO)"

This statement is in clear contrast with Johnson's report. The separation of the booster stage was verified. Why for any reason would US Space command continue to track the Booster stage and not the Probe itself???

The Probe started tumbling, and the booster dropped out of parking orbit. The signals should have been easy to tell apart...

"The escape stage Block L entered parking orbit tumbling and was not able to operate properly. "
www.astronautix.com...

Additionally, the image that matches up with eyewitness descriptions in the video posted, is actually a Venera Capsule. it's not the Kosmos 96 craft.

Kosmos 96 looked like this:



you can see the lander portion on the top of the vehicle. It doesn't really look like the Venera capsule much at all really. It's not even spherical...

At any rate, it is another piece of evidence to consider, and I thank you for posting it Arby!

I wonder where the Booster stage actually landed? I'll do some digging, let me know if you find out first

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
This statement is in clear contrast with Johnson's report. The separation of the booster stage was verified. Why for any reason would US Space command continue to track the Booster stage and not the Probe itself???

It seems exceedingly obvious to me that when you violate international law by illegally recovering an object that is the property of a foreign nation, that you don't advertise the fact. Some misdirection to conceal the recovery effort seems quite plausible and believable to me.

At any rate, it is another piece of evidence to consider, and I thank you for posting it Arby!

I wonder where the Booster stage actually landed? I'll do some digging, let me know if you find out first

I've already made several posts on this topic saying that Johnson told Leslie Kean there was more than one object in orbit and the different objects could have fallen in different places! And I also posted a request that if anyone had data on the other objects to please post it! So we now have the same questions! But nobody has posted any additional data and I haven't had time to look for it. It seems like orbital trajectories may not be in the public domain? At least I tried to search for them briefly and didn't have much luck, so it may take someone like Johnson going into his database to find the facts.

Thanks for checking that out, it is interesting isn't it?

Though as Jim Oberg pointed out it's not quite as reliable when you show them a picture and they say "yeah it looked like that" than it would be if each witness made an independent sketch.

[edit on 16-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
It seems exceedingly obvious to me that when you violate international law by illegally recovering an object that is the property of a foreign nation, that you don't advertise the fact. Some misdirection to conceal the recovery effort seems quite plausible and believable to me.

That's a very good point!

I did find this on the possibility of the fireball being another piece of Cosmos 96...

"The Kecksburg, PA, fireball of 1965 Dec 09 occurred near 21:46 UTC. Analysis
of the orbital elements of Cosmos 96 (1965-094A) reveals that Earth's
rotation took Kecksburg through the northbound side of its orbital plane
within a few minutes of 05:07 UTC; and through the southbound side near
11:31 UTC. Since those times are nowhere close to the time of the fireball,
the re-entry of Cosmos 96 could not possibly have been the cause.

> Did another part of the spacecraft decay over the United States...

Seven other pieces from the launch were catalogued, all of which were
reported to have decayed from orbit between 1965 Nov 28 and Dec 08; in any
event, they would have been in substantially the same orbital plane as
Cosmos 96; therefore, could not have caused the fireball in question. "

Source:
sci.tech-archive.net...

Also, I'm having trouble loading this page:
www.flightglobal.com...

(crappy internet connection today lol)

If you get a chance, please give it a look, it appears from my googling that it has further data on this question.

I'll try to look at it when I get home to my zippy wifi

-WFA

Update:
It finally loaded LOL. Here's the selection on Cosmos 96:
"November 23 1965—94. Cosmos 96 launched from the
Soviet Union at about 03.10 GMT. Components: Cosmos 96
(94A), transmitted on 19.895 and 19.735Mc/s; rocket body
(94B); six fragments (94C to 94H), first four decayed on
November 28. Orbit 94A, 136-174 miles, 51.89°, 89.43min,
descended December 9; orbit 94B, 130-167 miles, 51.85°,
89.24min, descended December 4."

-WFA

[edit on 17-9-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]

Edited to add:
I didn't lay out that quoted data very well, I should do so...

(If I'm reading this correctly...)
The Cosmos 96 Capsule was labeled 94A
The Rocket Body was labeled 94B
94A descended on December 9 after achieving a parking orbit
94B descended December 4
94C-94F (other fragments) decayed on November 28
94H is unrecorded in this report.

End edit.

[edit on 17-9-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]

one thing about orbital debris, only the densest and heaviest objects will create a fire ball.

In the case of the russian probe only the capsule and the main stage motors would have been dense enough(wieghed enough) to achieve a velocity high enough to create a fireball into the lower atmosphere.
things like separted stages will burn for a little while in the upper atmosphere, but will go dark long before they would be able to be seen by a casual ground observer.
A since it didnt fully achieve orbit its initial velocity would have been lower than something that decayed out of an established orbit.

Also i clearly remeber from when i was a child (mid 1970's)that a cosmos capsule was recovered in canada, it caused a big stink. It was in the news for several weeks while the ussr and us wrangled over it being returned.


What I find so very interesting is that what ever happened it was important enough for all the joint chiefs, the cabinet, the govenors of pennsylvania and new york, were gathered up in the middle of the night, and flown to lbj's texas ranch, between the sighting and 6am the next morning, for a briefing.
That was no simple feat in the early sixties.

Great points Punkinworks!

I just reread the Johnson report by Kean, and this sentence caught my eye on this read through:

"Clark also pointed out that the Cosmos capsule could not have made turns or descended slowly at an angle, as witnesses reported."

It's the 'slowly at an angle' part, that I thought really needed highlighting here. Regardless of whether or not the object actually turned (I see no reason to think it didn't...) Cosmos 96 could not have descended slowly at an angle, based upon it's orbital decay rate and trajectory.

Pretty much all of the eyewitnesses seem to agree on the descending slowly at an angle part...

Anyway, I thought it worth mentioning, as minor details often get overlooked in a case study this complex...

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
Great points Punkinworks!

Pretty much all of the eyewitnesses seem to agree on the descending slowly at an angle part...

Yes great post by punkinworks.

The observation of descending slowly at an angle may have more than one interpretation. It is quite common to underestimate the distance to fireballs. If the object was further away than witnesses believed, it would have traced a smaller arc across the sky than if the object was closer as they thought (giving the appearance of slow motion) when in fact if the object was further than they thought (as is commonly the case with meteor sightings), it could have been traveling much faster than anyone thought, and only appeared to be traveling slowly.

So the conclusion: the fact that witnesses said the object was moving slowly, does not necessarily mean that it was, even if the witnesses are truthful.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I absolutely agree that is possible. I myself have several times thought a meteor was coming down nearby, only to not hear or see an impact point...

However, it was really the 'at an angle' part that caught my attention. I don't obviously have the full orbital tracking in front of me, but to make a statement like that in the report, it occurs to me that they must have had good data to back up that claim.

At first I thought, well Cosmos was an impactor, not a lander, so it should have dropped straight down, but we cannot verify that it actually separated from the orbiter component. 7 pieces of debris would suggest it did, but there isn't any verification I can find on that point.

So without directly examining the orbital decay data step by step, and cross-referencing it with the orbital decay data from the other tracked pieces of debris, I suppose I would defer to the report, and to Clark.

I do wonder what data would make them claim that Cosmos 96 could not have descended slowly at an angle. I'll keep an eye out in my research, and see if I can find anything to corroborate that claim...

-WFA

one point i failed to make, was that even the capsule or main engines would not have had the initial velocity to remain incandesant into the lower atmosphere.
They would have gone dark very high up, more than 150k' up, and theres no way some one on the ground would have seen them close to impact.

something came down in kecksberg but it wasnt a russian probe.

Originally posted by punkinworks
one point i failed to make, was that even the capsule or main engines would not have had the initial velocity to remain incandesant into the lower atmosphere.
They would have gone dark very high up, more than 150k' up, and theres no way some one on the ground would have seen them close to impact.

something came down in kecksberg but it wasnt a russian probe.

If you assume the object that came down in Kecksburg did so at 4:45pm, that may be true, but I am not automatically assuming that's true. It seems to me just as likely that an object could have come down in Kecksburg at 6:20am, and they only discovered it after seeing the 4:45pm fireball whatever that was, in which case it certainly could have been a Russian satellite recovered in Kecksburg. These are not conclusions but possibilities that the data doesn't rule out.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
These are not conclusions but possibilities that the data doesn't rule out.

I congratulate you on this very well formed hypothesis.

There is one piece of data that doesn't support it though, the reports from U.S. Space Command of the Cosmos capsule going down in Canada.

Now, if US Space Command issued a false report, your theory would stand, so I suppose that's enough for me to entertain the theory in my list of possibilities.

However if further information emerges supporting the capsule landing in Canada (strangely absent from my searches thus far...) this theory would be weakened...

Aside from the orbital tracking from US Space Command though, and Johnson's orbital calculations predicting the US Space Command Report's likelyhood of truth, your theory does fit with the rest of the evidence I've come across in this case to date...

JKrog, what do you think?

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
However if further information emerges supporting the capsule landing in Canada (strangely absent from my searches thus far...) this theory would be weakened...

Bingo!!!

I'm impressed you discovered this concept independently!

We would have been just as interested in trying to recover the satellite if it landed in Canada as if it landed in PA, right? So where do we find any information about recovery efforts in Canada? The absence of such information must be at least considered, as you so rightly suggest!

Kudos for that observation!

reply to post by WitnessFromAfar


Arby, from the post I'm replying to...

Orbit 94A,
136-174 miles,
51.89°, 89.43min,
descended December 9



Please check that post and source out, as it appears to verify the landing in Canada...

The Canada Gazette does not yet have that date digitized ( as far as I can find in their library...)
www.gazette.gc.ca...

I'll let you know more when I find it. Curious to hear your thoughts on that above post...

-WFA

Edited to Add:
Your observation is correct and strange. I'm having trouble locating ANYTHING about the Cosmos landing in Canada from a Canadian news outlet...

I'll keep trying after a short break here, but I must comment that the lack of data here is WIERD.

-WFA

[edit on 18-9-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]

I just want to say guys, WOW....This IS what ATS is all about, what a GREAT discussion WitnessFromAfar, Tifozi, and Arbitrageur (as well relevant additions from others) have presented to this case, which had not been active on ATS for sometime. This is truly what ufology is about, using science and unbiased observations to attempt to find the truth. Great job guys, truly excellent worth and worthy of ATS. This is the most productive thread I have had thanks to you all, I am glad I could re-open this case to ATS. I know I haven't been posting much on here, as I am occupied with school right now. I just wanted to say good job and keep it up. There are some very good theories and deductions being exchanged here.

reply to post by WitnessFromAfar

Yes that was an excellent find you made on the other pieces of orbital debris, that's just the type of information I was looking for, so thanks for that! They had no data on the H part but I'm assuming that's not very relevant.

So that data does confirm the possible trajectory into PA hours before the 4:45pm fireball!

I think you are making a bigger mystery out of it than it needs to be, because if the US illegally recovered Cosmos-96 either in Canada or in PA, they wouldn't have wanted to admit it right? you don't rob a bank and then post a note on the internet "Hey I'm the guy who just robbed the bank" right? So I'm not surprised we're not finding much official information about the Cosmos96 recovery efforts as it was property of the USSR.

And if NASA says we recovered part of Cosmos-96, I don't have any particular reason to disbelieve that assertion. I only believe like you that it probably wasn't the cause of the 4:45pm fireball, but if it came down a few hours earlier it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch that we recovered it, and we probably would have tried to recover it whether it came down in Canada or Kecksburg.

Just some further data, nothing to report yet, just thought these were interesting enough to share...

you never know when someone might post the exact answer someone else is searching for...

select.nytimes.com...

Can't get into that paper above, anybody have NY Times access?

This is something I found on the way to finding the next item:
claudelafleur.qc.ca...-96

This is REALLY STRANGE:
www.google.ca...

and again without the prefix:
www.google.ca/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=tl%3A1&q=December+9th%2C+1965&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryCA

There are NO newspaper records available from Canada through Google for December 9th 1965....

I'm going to use some of my other resources to dig further...

-WFA

Edited to Add:
I sort of 'accidentally' acquired the correct url for the search results for December 9th, 1965, at Newspaperarchive.com:
www.newspaperarchive.com...

however it quickly bumps me to their 'sign up now' page, before I can acquire the data....

If anyone has a login at that site, it would help...

-WFA

[edit on 18-9-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]

reply to post by WitnessFromAfar

JKrog, what do you think?

I think that it seems unlikely, but possible that Cosmos crashed in the morning and was only discovered later on after a meteor drew attention to the area. But that still does not explain many things:



1.) The witness reports of a 'controlled descent'.
2.) The hieroglyphic writing that was seen around the fender-like bulge of the object. One of the firemen knew all types of Russian and stated that that was NOT Russian, in any form.
3.) The fact all evidence seems to show that Cosmos came down in Canada, based upon orbital mechanic laws.
4.) The fact that the object, if Cosmos, was not at least partially destroyed upon impact. The probe was meant to land on Venus in a controlled descent, not a natural descent. There is no way IMHO that any mad made probe that fell that hard and as fast as Cosmos would have would be totally intact without some type of artificial resistance to the fall.
5.) The fact that the witness statements said that there was a bluish light coming from the object right after the reported crash at 4:44 PM.
6.) How come no one saw the Cosmos probe crash at 6:20 AM? No one heard or saw it? I find that hard to believe.
7.) It took the US military around 12 hours to go out to the crash site, only after going there because they thought it was a meteor? RADAR sites would have tracked Cosmos at some point near the Kecksburg area, during its lower altitude descent. It would be hard to miss an object the size of a small car traveling at a step trajectory at 9.8 meters per second.
8.)Lets assume that the meteor crashed in Kecksburg about ten hours after Cosmos crashed in the same spot. What are the odds of that? They must be astronomical to say the least.

Also to say that Cosmos did crash in Kecksburg, rather than Canada would mean that some major errors were made by the tops in the field. As well as some very odd orbital mechanics taking place there. Also there is the fact that the theory of a Cosmos crash in Kecksburg does not fit at all with what was tracked by officials, who were tracking the failed probe, AS WELL the rocket booster.

I mean what we have here is a lot of 'ifs', from both sides. But in my humble opinion the evidence (as I said i my OP) seems to dismiss the Cosmos possibility in all likelihood.