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Re: US DOD FIREBALL RELEASE

http://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/~pbrown/usaf.html

Three years ago while I was trying to track down a fireball witnessed in
the Mojave Desert on Dec 27 (0425) 1994 (which I now call the Bishop
Bolide) I came in contact with:
Dave Desrocher, Capt, USAF
Chief, Space R&D and Analysis Branch HQ AFTAC/DOSD.
Although he was cordial and informative, he made it clear to me that it
may be deemed a risk to national security to divulge whether an
exploding fireball was detected (or even not detected), particularly
over the continental United States.
I have yet to find a record of it in their archives.

Bob Verish

> -----SNIP!-------
> The Air Force has been releasing these reports since at least 1994, so they've been coming out during Shoemaker's lifetime.  Has Shoemaker bothered to look at any of them?  Here's an archive of the reports:
> 
> http://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/~pbrown/usaf.html
> 
> >Also, while we "heard" about the El Paso bollide,
> 
> Here's the Air Force report on the El Paso event released on October 21, 1997:
> 
> http://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/~pbrown/dod971.txt
> 
> It is reported as both an impact and as a detonation at 36km.  It is not clear to me if the Air Force's definition of an "impact" is
> an Earth impact or an impact with the Earth's atmosphere.
>--------SNIP!-------- 
> Well, considering we're talking about surveillance data from a military satellite, and there are issues of national security at hand, it is not surprising that the DOD have not released the full data set.  The fact
> the Air Force is voluntarily releasing any data to the public on their own is to me pretty amazing.  The data from the 1960's can probably be obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.  Has anyone applied for it?
> ----SNIP!------- 
> Ron Baalke

-- 
*****************************
"How can you benefit humanity, if humanity has not a clue to 
what (meteoritics is) doing for them? It is a point that will never be
explained.!" - F. Stroike
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Archive of DoD Press Releases

The following are press releases/announcements from the Air Force Technical Applications Centre (AFTAC) Office of Public Affairs and elsewhere. These releases relate to satellite observations of fireballs detected in the atmosphere by optical and infrared sensors aboard DoD satellites