When a mysterious crescent appeared over Moscow in 1967, alien enthusiasts were unaware they were actually tracking a 3-megaton weapon designed to bypass American radar.
During the late 1960s, a top-secret Soviet program to sneak nuclear weapons around U.S. early warning radars was mistaken for a rash of UFO sightings by Moscow’s citizens. The weapon, known as FOBS, created a mysterious pattern in the night sky that many mistook for signs of alien visitation.
In the spring of 1967, people living in the western Soviet Union noticed something odd in the sky at dusk: a mysterious crescent-shaped sliver of light, about the size of the moon from most directions but larger from others. The crescent appeared six times in 1967, always at the same time of day, before it finally disappeared.
According to veteran space expert James Oberg at Air & Space Magazine, the Soviet press speculated they were UFOs, and UFO enthusiast groups sprang up across the country to record the sightings.
Suddenly, after the sixth incident, Soviet press coverage of the incidents abruptly stopped. Someone in Moscow with the right clearance realized that the crescents in the sky at sundown were actual evidence of a top-secret weapons test—one that violated existing treaties on the deployment of nuclear weapons into space.
The “UFO” sightings were actually test launches of the R-36 Orb, a secret nuclear space missile. Developed from the SS-9 Scarp intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-36 Orb was designed to rocket into low-Earth orbit and de-orbit over the United States. Launched in a southern direction, the weapon could pass over the South Pole and then come at the United States from the direction of Mexico, bypassing the network of early warning radars facing north.
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