The Vela Incident (Part One: Alert 747)

"There was indication of a nuclear explosion in the region of South Africa, either South Africa, Israel using a ship at sea, or nothing."

In May 1969, Vela 6911 had been launched into the upper atmosphere to monitor a portion of the planet for any sign of a nuclear explosion. It was an Advanced Vela Satellite, carrying X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron detectors. It was also armed with a pair of optical sensors called bhangmeters, which were named that almost as a joke, because 'you would have to be high' to believe they would actually work.

Well, over their lifespan, the bhangmeters had actually worked successfully. Of the 41 "double-flashes" that the Vela satellites recorded over their first decade of use, all had been confirmed as a nuclear explosion by other means, usually by detecting the radioactive debris afterward. But then on Saturday, 22 September 1979, at 00:53 Coordinated Universal Time, Vela 6911's two bhangmeters recorded a double flash over the southern Indian Ocean, somewhere between South Africa and Antarctica...



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