Project 10073 Record Card and Correspondence — Baltimore, Maryland, 7 November 1962

On 7 November 1962, at approximately 0540 local time, a night dispatcher for the Edgewater Cab Company in Middle River, Maryland, observed a pink object in the sky to the south. The witness reported that the object moved erratically and possessed a 'funny shape' that expanded significantly over the course of 15 minutes, eventually covering one-fifth of the distance between the eastern and western horizons. The witness provided a hand-drawn diagram of the object's initial and expanded appearance and forwarded his account to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the hope that it might be of value to the space program. NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board received the letter on 23 January 1963 and subsequently forwarded the report to the Air Tactical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on 4 April 1963, noting that the agency lacked the facilities to investigate such occurrences. The official analysis recorded on the Project 10073 record card concluded that the object was a NASA sodium/chemical shot launched from Wallops Island. The pink color was attributed to the effect of the early morning sun on a high-altitude cloud, and the observed expansion and duration were deemed consistent with the dissipation of the chemical trail by winds.