Las Cruces, New MexicoJanuary 1954

On a clear January night in 1954, a trained observer at White Sands Proving Ground in Las Cruces, New Mexico saw a bright light that pulsed in a regular pattern. The observer was preparing a camera for a missile test and had stepped outside to check whether stars were visible for calibration. Instead, he noticed a point of light growing brighter and dimmer in cycles of roughly twelve seconds.

The light moved across the sky from northeast to southeast in about five to six seconds. It reached its maximum brightness when it was directly in front of the observer, then faded as it receded into the distance. The observer described the object as a pure point source of light with no detectable physical shape or size to the naked eye. He ruled out any conventional explanation, noting that despite his five years of experience in astronomy and thousands of meteor observations, he was confident this was not a meteor of any kind.

A second observer at Ogee Askania station, located roughly twelve miles south-southwest of the first observer's position, independently saw the same object from a different angle at nearly the same time. The two observers confirmed their sightings through radio contact immediately after the event. Using rough triangulation between the two positions, they estimated the object traveled at roughly thirty degrees of azimuth per second, which would put its speed at around 3,000 miles per hour, and calculated it was somewhere between two and three miles away.

The Air Force evaluation on the case record listed the conclusion as "unknown." The full case file, consisting of eleven pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.