Case · C-123

Santa Cruz (Bolivia) 1979: two metal spheres that fell from the sky and the “Moon Dust” reports

Enconada, near Cotoca, and the Buen Retiro area (Santa Cruz Department) · Bolivia · Aug 10, 1979

On land Civilian witnesses Photos Physical traces

What happened

In the early hours of August 10, 1979, a fireball was seen in the Santa Cruz department; farmers found two heat-marked metal spheres, with holes with melted edges, one near Cotoca and the other in the Buen Retiro area, and the news emerged in the following days; newspapers put their diameter at about 80 cm. On August 17 and 21, the defense attaché at the U.S. embassy in La Paz reported on them to the DIA in two reports titled “Moon Dust,” the Air Force program to recover foreign space fragments, translating the articles from El Deber and El Diario and sending photos and a film. The reports add no assessments of their own on the origin; having emerged in the mid-1980s thanks to FOIA requests by UFO researchers, they have been cited as an indication of retrievals of non-human craft.

Proposed explanation

As early as 1979 the director of the Bolivian Air Force Academy, Colonel Ariel Coca, suggested a tank or part of a satellite. In 2014–2015 the satellite analyst Ted Molczan linked the spheres to the reentry of the second stage of a Delta rocket (1979-072B), launched on August 10, 1979 with the Westar 3 satellite, which contained two titanium helium spheres of similar size; the orbital reconstruction is compatible but sensitive to the height of perigee, and some discrepancies remain (reported mass, time of one sighting), which the author himself points out.

Official investigation

Defense Attaché of the U.S. Embassy in La Paz (reports to the DIA, Project Moon Dust); Bolivian Air Force Academy

Words of the document

A STRANGE OBJECT HAD BEEN FOUND ON A FARM NEAR SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA

Official documents

1. MOON DUST, Object Found near Santa Cruz (IIR 6808005779, 17/8/1979) e MOON DUST, Additional Object Reportedly Found near Santa Cruz (IIR 6808005979, 21/8/1979) · USDAO La Paz for the DIA; released by the Air Force's NASIC in 2009 (The Black Vault copy) · Aug 21, 1979

Sources

1. NASIC (U.S. Air Force), FOIA response 2009-01092-F with the two Moon Dust reports on Bolivia (The Black Vault copy) (primary source)
2. Ted Molczan, “Re-entry Sightings and Debris Recovery of 1979-072B – Bolivia, 1979 August 10 UTC” (satobs.org, 2014-2015) (analysis, skeptical)
3. The Black Vault, “Project Moon Dust” (archive page) (analysis)

On this site

Documents 1

• The State Department “Moon Dust” cables (1973–1978) on the retrieval of fallen space objects Original available

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