Laredo, TexasOctober 1958

On October 11, 1958, the AN/FPS-17 radar at the Laredo Test Site in Laredo, Texas detected a mysterious target while searching for the Russian satellite Sputnik 3. The radar captured the signal for 28 seconds. The radar operators were expecting to track one target but observed something different instead, raising questions about what they had actually seen.

The target showed unusual characteristics that puzzled the analysts. It appeared suddenly on the radar screen in three different radar beams at once, suggesting an unexpected arrival rather than a gradual entry into the scanning area. The target also displayed two distinct sections. The first lasted less than a second and showed a very fast rate of movement through the radar beams. The second section lasted 27 seconds and moved much more slowly, changing very little in distance from the radar. The object appeared to be at a height of about 64 nautical miles (roughly 74 miles) above the ground and a range of around 470 nautical miles away.

The Air Force dismissed several possibilities. A rocket from White Sands Proving Ground would have behaved differently. The known satellite was not in the right location at the right time. However, the radar data fit the profile of a meteor quite well. The sudden appearance of a bright signal is typical of meteors. The two-part pattern makes sense if the first section came from the meteor itself and the second from the ionized trail it left behind. Meteor echoes tend to move very slowly once the trail forms in the upper atmosphere.

The analysts concluded that the object was most probably a meteor, or possibly two meteors occurring in nearly the same space at nearly the same time. The full case file comprises 15 pages as held by the National Archives.