Description

The Roswell Incident started in 1947 with the recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico. It later became the basis for conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debris was a military balloon operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, a program intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After metallic and rubber debris was recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon.