Project 10073 Record Card — Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 15 October 1957

This document consists of a Project 10073 record card and associated military communications regarding an unidentified aerial phenomenon reported in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on October 15, 1957. A civilian witness reported observing a single, round, bright white object, described as being the size of a dime, traveling in a straight path from north to south. The duration of the observation was reported as less than ten seconds. The report indicates that the observation was a ground-visual sighting with no radar contact or photographic evidence. Weather conditions at the time were noted as having high clouds with breaks in the north. The official conclusion reached by the evaluating agency, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), was that the object was likely a meteor, noting that the Earth was passing through the Orionid meteor shower at the time. The documentation includes a military cable routing the report through various Air Force commands, including the 66th Air Command at MacDill AFB, the 35th Air Division at Dobbins AFB, and the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB. Handwritten annotations on the document reflect internal discussion regarding the nature of the sighting, with one note from an assistant operations officer suggesting the possibility of a satellite or its launcher, though this was countered by a handwritten remark questioning the visibility of such an object to the naked eye at that time. The record card was ultimately directed to the Aerospace Studies Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base.