The Vela Incident

September 22, 1979 - It was on this day that an American satellite, Vela 6911, picked up the tell-tale double flash of a nuclear explosion in a remote section of the Indian Ocean.

The Vela satellite was part of a system speficially designed to look for nuclear explosions, but the incident it recorded was soon corroborated with additional data.

Deep sea sonar picked up a dull thud that was consistent with sounds emitted during confirmed nuclear tests. In addition, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico detected a significant shockwave that was causing ionospheric disturbance.

President Carter received the top secret news and was told there was over a 90 percent chance that someone had detonated a 2.4 kiloton nuke between South Africa and Antarctica. Back then, the list of suspects was relatively small with Israel near the top.

The timing was especially bad for Carter as he had campaigned on a promise to limit nuclear proliferation. If Israel was involved, this would open a huge can of worms as the United States would be obligated to impose sanctions - a move that would have serious political repercussions for a president who was already facing a difficult reelection.

President Carter did the politically sensible thing, he set up an advisory panel of experts, and he made sure they understood he was very interested in hearing non-nuclear possibilities. The panel mulled over the evidence for almost a year. Finally, in the summer of 1980 they issued their findings. It was their conclusion that a micro meteorite could have struck the satellite and caused the flash that the sensors detected. Another possible culprit could have been a rare super-bolt of lightning. Oh yeah, they also admitted there was a chance it was a nuclear explosion.

In the end the story basically faded away, only to be dredged up from time to time by conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts.