Space Daily May 24, 2026 • 00:51

The Vela satellites were built to catch secret nuclear tests, but they accidentally recorded flashes from deep space that opened a new branch of astrophysics - Space Daily

The Vela satellites were built to catch secret nuclear tests, but they accidentally recorded flashes from deep space that opened a new branch of astrophysics - Space Daily

The U.S. military's nuclear detection satellites started catching mysterious gamma-ray flashes in 1967 that did not match any known weapon signature. The discovery stayed classified for six years before it became clear the flashes were exploding stars billion…

The Vela satellites were not built to study stars. They were built to watch for nuclear weapons.
In the 1960s, after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom signed the Partial Tes… [+8809 chars]

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