In the early 1950s, before the launch of Sputnik and the beginning of humanity’s space exploration, something unusual was captured in the skies. Photographs taken during that time revealed objects that appeared and then vanished, leaving behind no explanation. These mysterious sightings have become the focus of an ongoing investigation by a team of scientists led by Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, a Swedish astronomer and physicist. Her research, particularly through the VASCO Project, seeks to unravel the mystery of these vanishing space objects, using historical astronomical data and modern analytical methods.

The VASCO Project, which stands for “Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations,” was launched with the goal of identifying stars and other celestial objects that seem to vanish from historical records. Dr. Villarroel, during an interview on Reality Check with Ross Coulthart, described how the team had hoped to find stars disappearing as part of some unknown cosmic process. However, what they discovered was far more perplexing. In the early plates they examined, particularly those from April 12, 1950, they identified objects that appeared in one exposure and disappeared in the next, sometimes within minutes. These transient objects were captured at a time when there were no human-made satellites or space debris, raising profound questions about their origin.