Something Was in Orbit Before Sputnik

Tuesday, March 25

Independent Study Confirms Pre-Sputnik Orbital Objects on 1950s Photographic Plates

A preprint posted to arXiv by Ivo Busko, a senior systems software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, reports that an independent analysis of 1950s photographic plates from Hamburg Observatory has confirmed findings from the VASCO Project – mysterious sub-second optical flashes consistent with sunlight reflecting off flat, rotating objects in orbit around Earth. The plates date from 1954 to 1957. Sputnik did not launch until October 1957.

Busko analyzed pairs of plates taken roughly 30 minutes apart and found 35 good transient candidates. The flashes exhibit systematically narrow profiles compared to real stars – exactly what you’d expect from a sub-second event on a long-exposure plate. This matches what VASCO lead Beatriz Villarroel (Nordita / IAC) found on entirely different plates from Palomar Observatory, including nine simultaneous transients on a single 1950 plate.

Christopher Mellon – former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and chairman of the UAP Disclosure Fund – is a named co-author on the peer-reviewed VASCO citizen science paper (Universe, 2022), directly linking this line of astrophysics research to the UAP disclosure world. Full article

“Our findings independently confirm that these transients exhibit systematically narrow full width at half maximum compared to stellar point spread functions. This provides further support for their interpretation as sub-second optical flashes, consistent with reflections from flat, rotating objects in orbit around Earth.” – Ivo Busko, arXiv:2603.20407