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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media24 Jun 2016
Roland Emmerich's Independence Day: Resurgence, a sequel set 20 years after his 1996 alien-invasion hit, opened in U.S. theaters. Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman returned; Will Smith did not. Reviews were largely negative.
Photo: Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY 2.0
Sightings17 Apr 2016
The pilot of a British Airways A320 arriving from Geneva reported that an object, believed to be a drone, struck the front of the aircraft on approach to Heathrow. The plane landed safely and Metropolitan Police aviation officers opened an investigation.
Photo: Jeremy Segrott from Cardiff, Wales, UK, CC BY 2.0
Skinwalker Ranch16 Apr 2016
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, an inflatable test room built by Robert Bigelow's aerospace company, was installed on the International Space Station after arriving on a SpaceX cargo flight. Bigelow had earlier funded NIDS and the Skinwalker Ranch research.
Photo: NASA/Roscosmos, Public domain
Media12 Apr 2016
Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking announced Breakthrough Starshot in New York, a $100 million research program to test gram-scale light-sail probes that could reach Alpha Centauri at about 20 percent of light speed. Former NASA Ames director Pete Worden was named to lead it.
Photo: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO, CC BY 4.0
Government24 Mar 2016
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel on ABC that, if elected, she would go into the government's UFO and Area 51 files and make as much public as possible, saying people should be told if there was nothing there.
Photo: United States Department of State, Public domain
Sightings18 Mar 2016
A Lufthansa A380 crew approaching Los Angeles International at about 5,000 feet reported a drone passing roughly 200 feet above the jet, 14 miles out. The FAA notified Los Angeles police, whose air unit did not find the drone; the plane landed safely.
Photo: Glenn Beltz from Goleta, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0
Sightings6 Mar 2016
A very bright bolide lit up Upper Austria, Bavaria and southwestern Czech Republic on the night of 6 March 2016. Czech European Fireball Network cameras pinned down the fall zone, and the first meteorites were found near Stubenberg six days later.
Photo: H. Raab ( de.Vesta ), CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings19 Feb 2016
An Air France A320 from Barcelona descending toward Charles de Gaulle met a drone the captain estimated passed about five meters from the left wing; the co-pilot flew a manual avoidance. France's BEA classed it as a serious incident and opened an investigation.
Photo: Benoit Prieur, CC0
Media24 Jan 2016
Fox aired the first episode of an X-Files revival after the NFC Championship game, drawing about 13.4 million viewers in preliminary ratings. The return reunited Mulder and Scully and brought the paranormal-investigation series back to prime time.
Photo: GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media22 Jan 2016
Sony released this young-adult science fiction film, adapted from Rick Yancey's novel, about a teenager surviving successive waves of attack by an alien mothership. It opened in U.S. theaters on January 22, 2016.
Photo: Chris Roth, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government21 Jan 2016
The CIA published two web features pointing readers to declassified UFO documents in its FOIA collection: one sorted files for X-Files characters Mulder and Scully, the other drew lessons from how agencies investigated sightings such as the Socorro, New Mexico case.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain
Media14 Jan 2016
USA Network premiered Colony, a drama from Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal about one family's struggle to survive in a near-future, occupied Los Angeles.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government2 Jan 2016
Metal spheres fell in Yen Bai and Tuyen Quang provinces in early January 2016, one landing in a maize field and others hitting houses. Vietnam's Defence Ministry said they were burnt, non-explosive compressed-gas tanks likely from a launch vehicle, and that they were not UFO parts.
Sightings2016
UK Airprox Board figures show near-miss reports involving drones, balloons, model aircraft and unidentified small objects rose from 40 in 2015 to 94 in 2016, then a record. The board notes pilots often see such objects only fleetingly, so many are logged simply as unknown objects.
Whistleblowers2016
Charles Halt, deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters in 1980, published The Halt Perspective with former police officer John Hanson, setting out his own account of the Rendlesham Forest events. In press coverage Halt said he believed the objects he saw were extraterrestrial.
Photo: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, Public domain
Skinwalker Ranch2016
Robert Bigelow's company sold the ranch in 2016 to Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal, whose ownership stayed private until a 2020 History series. The Salt Lake Tribune cited a reported price of about $500,000.
Photo: Paul from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media14 Dec 2015
Syfy began airing a six-hour adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End, in which alien Overlords take control of Earth and promise to end its problems. It ran over three nights, December 14 to 16.
Photo: ITU Pictures, CC BY 2.0
Sightings27 Nov 2015
Ten Desert Fireball Network cameras recorded a fireball over South Australia. An aircraft spotted a 60 cm mark in the mud of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre South near the predicted fall line, and on Dec. 31, 2015 a team dug the meteorite out from 42 cm down, the digital network's first recovered fall.
Photo: Rmhowie, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military7 Nov 2015
On the evening of Nov. 7, 2015, a bright, spreading light was seen and filmed from California to Nevada and Arizona, prompting UFO speculation online. The Navy and Pentagon said it was a scheduled, unarmed Trident II (D5) test missile fired from the submarine USS Kentucky off the coast.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Media13 Oct 2015
The second Chapman University Survey of American Fears added paranormal beliefs, finding about 20 percent agreed aliens visited Earth in the ancient past and about 18 percent that they have come in modern times. Later waves of the survey tracked the same questions.
Photo: Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0
