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At 20 September 1977 "Kosmos 955" lifted off from Plesetsk at 3:58 A.M.
local time. As the A-1 booster climbed, it left the earth's shadow. The exhaust plume from
the twenty engines was backlit by the sun. From the ground, which was still in darkness,
the now illuminated exhaust plume looked like a huge, jellyfish-shaped apparition slowly
moving through the night sky. The weather over northern Russia was clear, so early risers
in Leningrad, Estonia, and as far west as Finland saw the plume (Moscow was clouded over).
Nikolay Milov, a local TASS correspondent in the city of Petrozavodsk, wrote up a brief
account of an "unusual natural phenomenon observed in Karelia." Two days later,
the report was sent out over the international wires. Soon, American newspapers were
filled with accounts of the "jellyfish UFO" seen over Russia. Russian UFO buffs
began collecting second and third-hand accounts of the events of that exciting morning.
Such accounts being notoriously unreliable, it is not surprising that they soon had a fine
collection of wild stories, rumors, and fantasies all wrong. One account stated that rays
from the UFO had drilled holes in pavement, stones, and windows. The holes were not seen,
of course; the KGB had taken them away. Some people, other stories went, seemed to become
ill and mentally confused because of the "UFO". As the rumors were passed from
one UFO buff to the next, the events became so distorted as to be unrecognizable. The
mundane rocket launching soon became a huge object seen for 2 hours at an altitude of 60
miles (97 kilometers). Small UFOs were seen to dart in and out of the huge mother ship. As
the stories spread, the Soviet government became concerned. It was hostile to UFOs, calling
them "inventions" of Western "yellow
journalism". The irony was that
the Soviet government had the explanation but could not use it; Plesetsk and its military
launches were state secrets. Despite Plesetsk's discovery in 1966 by the Kettering group,
the Soviet Union had never publicly acknowledged its existence. To both cover up Plesetsk
and explain away the UFO, the Soviet Union trotted out a number of lame explanations. In
October 1977, the sighting was explained as a reentering satellite. When this didn't work,
in August 1978, M. Dmitriyev, a doctor of chemical sciences, called it a
"chemoluminescence zone"- industrial smog, which glowed due to solar radiation.
Dr. V.V. Migulin in January 1979 referred to it as "physical changes in the upper
atmosphere" similar to the northern lights due to solar radiation. The Soviet dilemma
was made worse on the night of 14 June 1980, when the launch of "Kosmos 1188"
(an early-warning satellite) was seen from central Russia, including Moscow, Gorkiy and
Kazan. On 15 May 1981, it happened again when a "Meteor 2" weather satellite,
launched from Plesetsk, was seen from Moscow. The Soviet government was between a rock and
a hard place. Their bogus explanations could not stop the UFO stories, while in the West,
where Plesetsk was common knowledge, space analysts were enjoying their discomfort.
Finally, the Soviet Union surrendered to the UFOs. The 20 June 1983 issue of
"Pravda" carried an article entitled "Place of lift off -Plesetsk". It
began , "To the legend of 'flying saucers' (UFO) the Plesetsk cosmodrome makes
a great contribution".
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