If missiles were launched in the vicinity of this celestial visitor, then I wonder if they were tracking this MoCF as it approached the planet before firing a missile or two in order to plausibly claim that what folks witnessed was "just a missile test"?Ī reader sent us the following eyewitness report and photo: Either way, they are getting really desperate in their explanations of the celestial phenomena taking place in our skies. It seems that this addendum to the story was required to account for the reports of part of the fireball/MoCF crashing to earth. Returned to base? Not only does that contradict the story about two Patriot interceptor missiles hitting the Juno rocket, this scenario is physically impossible because rockets and missiles do not "return to base"! Somebody somewhere down the chain of command must have got their wires crossed.
It just put on a light show in the process. The winds in the various layers of atmosphere skewed the missile contrail, creating a swirly cloud pattern seen in the sky. The rising sun backlit the Juno missile's contrail and provided a spectacular morning sight for early risers across the region. Depending on the sunlight, it's visible at times. It was the 14th missile launched from the Fort Wingate, NM area since the mid '90s. Now contrast the Associated Press account of what went down with the following report from a Utah-based media outlet: Watch and listen as the Army spokeswoman lies through her teeth about how this incident was "one of our very high-end, very intense things that we do out here. Whatever about Patriot interceptor missiles "killing incoming targets by direct strike and not exploding", they are again stretching the bounds of credulity with this story about the US Army lobbing missiles at an expensive space rocket in order to blow it to smithereens over US territory. The Patriot missiles kill incoming targets by direct strike and don't explode. Two of the missiles were fired and hit the incoming Juno missile, said Dan O'Boyle, a spokesman for the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, which was in charge of the Patriots used in the test. The Juno missile was then targeted by advanced versions of the Patriot missile fired from White Sands, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) away, as part of a test. The Associated Press report got even weirder when it described not one but THREE missiles launched by the US Army:
Strangely enough, Fort Wingate was supposedly shut down in 1993. Having said that, there does appear to be a " Juno Target Missile" which appears to be a modified version of the booster rockets used on older generation space launch vehicles. There was Juno I, a large rocket booster used for satellite launches in the 1950s, while the Juno II was an American space launch vehicle used during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The problem here is that there doesn't seem to be any information on anything called a "Juno Ballistic missile". The expended first stage landed in a designated area of U.S. MT from Fort Wingate near Gallup, N.M., said Drew Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. The "explosion" was a normal separation of the first and second stages of the unarmed Juno ballistic missile that was fired at 6:30 a.m. No one reported a trail moving from the ground upwards, just a very fast-moving dot in the sky that produced a very bright trail mid-atmosphere, indicating that nothing was launched from the ground.ĭamage control quickly went into operation, with Associated Press reporting that: A sheriff's deputy in northern New Mexico said he witnessed "an explosion" and part of the object breaking apart from the main body. My suspicion that we were looking at the arrival and overhead explosion of yet another meteor or cometary fragment (MoCF) solidified when I read some of the ridiculous claims of the US Army that they had test-fired a rocket/missile at 5.30am local time on the 13th of September.įolks contacted law enforcement in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado to report "a crash". Photos taken by residents reminded me of the glowing trail seen across the Caucasus on the 7th June 2012 (which I have written about here). Photo taken near Phoenix, Arizona of the trail left behind by an incoming meteor/comet fragment that exploded above southwestern US on September 13th 2012.On Thursday morning, 13th September 2012, early risers from all over the southwestern United States - California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico - were stunned by the appearance of a vivid luminescent trail high up in the atmosphere.