Kecksburg UFO incident

The incident gained wide notoriety in popular culture and ufology, with speculation ranging from extraterrestrial craft to debris from the Soviet space probe Kosmos 96,[1] and is often called "Pennsylvania's Roswell".

Reports of hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio,[3] grass fires,[4] and sonic booms in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area were attributed to the fireball.

[5] Some people in the village of Kecksburg, about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, reported wisps of blue smoke, vibrations, and a "thump",[6] and also that something from the sky had crashed in the woods.

The Federal Aviation Administration received 23 reports from aircraft pilots, starting at 4:44 p.m. A seismograph 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Detroit recorded shock waves created by the fireball as it passed through the atmosphere.

The Sky & Telescope article concluded that "the path of the fireball extended roughly from northwest to southeast" and ended "in or near the western part of Lake Erie".

[13] In December 2005, just before the 40th anniversary of the Kecksburg incident, NASA released a statement reporting that experts had examined metallic fragments from the area and determined they were from a Soviet satellite that re-entered the atmosphere and broke up, but records of their findings were lost in the 1980s.

[22] More recent comments by NASA are less supportive of a link to a Soviet satellite: There is some speculation that the reentry of the Cosmos 96/Venera-type spacecraft was responsible for a fireball which was seen over southwestern Ontario, Canada and at least eight states from Michigan to New York at 4:43 p.m. EST (21:43 UT) on 9 December 1965.