The Judica-Cordiglia brothers are two Italian former amateur radio operators who made audio recordings which allegedly support the conspiracy theory that the Soviet space program covered up cosmonaut deaths in the 1960s. [1] The pair claimed to have recorded several failed secret Soviet space missions. These recordings have been the center of public interest for more than 50 years. [2] [3]
Achille (1933-2015) and his brother Giovanni Battista (1939-2024) set up their own experimental listening station just outside Turin in the late 1950s. The brothers used a disused German bunker at a site named Torre Bert. [1] Working with scavenged and improvised equipment, they claimed to have successfully monitored transmissions from the Soviet Sputnik program (1 & 2) and Explorer 1, the first American satellite, in 1958 using equipment that recorded flight information such as telemetry, voice recordings and visual data. [3]
In the 1960s, the brothers released recordings alleged to be radio communications taken from secret Soviet Union space missions, including the purported dying sounds of a suffocating lost cosmonaut. [3] As compiled by Kris Hollington of the Fortean Times , a British monthly magazine that popularizes "anomalous phenomena",[ citation needed ] the quoted list of these is as follows: [2]
May 1960 Unnamed cosmonaut lost when his orbiting space capsule veered off course.
November 1960 The brothers picked up an SOS message in Morse code from a troubled spacecraft.
February 1961 Recorded the suffocation of a cosmonaut.
April 1961 Just prior to Yuri Gagarin’s flight, a capsule circled the Earth three times before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
May 1961 Weak calls for help from an orbiting capsule.
October 1961 A Soviet spacecraft veered off course and vanished into deep space.
November 1962 A space capsule bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere during re-entry and disappeared.
May 1963 Unnamed female cosmonaut perished on re-entry.
April 1964 Cosmonaut lost when capsule burnt up on re-entry. [2]
In The 28 November 1960 recording, a faint SOS Morse Code signal has been purportedly sent from a troubled spacecraft leaving Earth's orbit. [4] [ full citation needed ]
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There have been inconsistencies in the recordings. For instance, audio transcripts reveal that none of the cosmonauts, who were supposed to be Soviet air force pilots, followed standard communication protocols, such as identifying themselves when speaking or using correct technical terminology. [5] [ better source needed ] [6] Likewise, some of the recordings contain disjointed sentences and grammatical errors, and the speaker has an accent that does not sound Russian. [7] [8] [ better source needed ] Given the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time, the US intelligence community considered the claims plausible, but subsequent mass declassification of Soviet documents provided no evidence for the existence of the Lost Cosmonauts. [9]
Fortean Times published an article on the brothers and their recordings of lost cosmonauts in March 2008. [2]
In 2011, the brothers' story was featured on the Science Channel TV show, Dark Matters: Twisted But True . [4]
In March 2020, Giovanni Battista was interviewed by Vice regarding the brothers' story on the Extremes podcast Season 2 Episode 25 titled "Mystery of the Lost Cosmonauts". [10] It was also featured on a Vice article titled "These Brothers Were Eavesdropping on Space Transmissions When They Heard Cries for Help", as an accompaniment to the podcast episode. [3]
The 2024 Apple TV+ series Constellation includes recordings of a lost female cosmonaut as a major plot point, and recreates the brothers' alleged 1961 recording. [11]
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Vostok 1 was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first human orbital spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 12 April 1961, with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard, making him the first human to reach orbital velocity around the Earth and to complete a full orbit around the Earth.
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Korabl-Sputnik 2, also known as Sputnik 5 in the West, was a Soviet artificial satellite, and the third test flight of the Vostok spacecraft. It was the first spaceflight to send animals into orbit and return them safely back to Earth, including two Soviet space dogs, Belka and Strelka. Launched on 19 August 1960, it paved the way for the first human orbital flight, Vostok 1, which was launched less than eight months later.
Vostok was a class of single-pilot crewed spacecraft built by the Soviet Union. The first human spaceflight was accomplished with Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Korabl-Sputnik 1, also known as Sputnik 4 in the West, was the first test flight of the Soviet Vostok programme, and the first Vostok spacecraft. It was launched on May 15, 1960. Though Korabl-Sputnik 1 was uncrewed, it was a precursor to the first human spaceflight, Vostok 1. Its mass was 4,540 kilograms (10,010 lb), of which 1,477 kilograms (3,256 lb) was instrumentation.
The Vostok programme was a Soviet human spaceflight project to put the first Soviet cosmonauts into low Earth orbit and return them safely. Competing with the United States Project Mercury, it succeeded in placing the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, in a single orbit in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The Vostok capsule was developed from the Zenit spy satellite project, and its launch vehicle was adapted from the existing R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design. The name "Vostok" was treated as classified information until Gagarin's flight was first publicly disclosed to the world press.
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{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)I think that the Judica-Cordiglia brothers did run a tracking station and picked up signals from various spacecraft. However, for some reason they thought that they needed sensational stories maintain their image of a 'hot-shot' operation. Once they over-interpreted some receptions and made fantastic claims they were 'trapped' and had to continue to produce sensations.