Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2022

15 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING two decades, parallel to the need for military superpowers to develop new technologies to strengthen their geopolitical dominance. It is true that even in the centuries pre- ceding the twentieth century there was evidence of unusual celestial sightings in the chronicles of some civilizations. That said, the mysticism that often characterized their docu- mentation allows now for only rarely reasonable interpretations of what was reported. Project Blue Book collected over 12,000 reports, highlighting how most of all reported sightings were explainable by natural phenomena, T he less-young readers (or the better-informed ones) may re- member “Project Blue Book.” This was the code name of a system- atic study of unidentified flying ob- jects (UFOs) conducted between 1952 and 1969 by the US Air Force. Project Blue Book had the dual task of establishing whether those mys- terious “aircraft” could pose a threat to national security and of scientifically analyzing the data col- lected after each sighting. Curiously, but not coincidentally, the phenomenon of UFOs originated during the Second World War and grew exponentially in the following I n the background is the Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Depart- ment of Defense. [Kiyoshi Tanno] Above, NASA headquarters, or “NASA HQ”, formally known as the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters and formerly called Two Independence Square. Hidden Figures Way is a dedication to all those who worked as computers and made possible the first space missions of the USA.