From the alleged fake moon landing to alien coverup, conspiracy theorists have long been accusing NASA, the United States space agency for not being transparent while conducting missions. Now, a set of declassified documents has revealed that United States Air Force (USAF), with the help of NASA, had once planned to conduct a nuclear explosion on the moon.
The secretive 'Project A119'
A report published in Express reveals that the USAF with the guidance of NASA had carried out a mission named 'Project A119' to detonate the moon with a powerful nuclear bomb. The report also claimed that this mission was planned soon after the USSR launched Sputnik 1 in 1957.
"Project A119 was a top-secret program developed by the US Air Force in 1958, with the intent of detonating a small nuclear warhead on the Moon to investigate the capability of weapons in space. A 190-page declassified report from 1959 states that the motivation for such a detonation was for scientific, military and political reasons," Express reports, citing YouTube channel History Uncovered as the source.
Show of morale boost
The major aim of the study was to analyze the effects of a nuclear explosion on the lunar surface. Through Project A119, the United States aimed to know how long the radioactivity will continue after a nuclear blast. Apart from these scientific reasons, the country had also an intention to proclaim its dominance in the space race which was at its peak during the time of the Cold War.
"The US was lagging behind in the Space Race and the Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud from the explosion so large it would be visible with the naked eye on Earth. It would have been a massive show of force that they hoped would boost the morale of the American public," added the report.
Does the US government have a climate-controlling weapon?
Citing a speech from the 1990s, a section of conspiracy theorists had outlandishly claimed that the US government has climate-controlling weapons in their arsenal. These rumors came amid the tensions that happened between Iran and the United States, and in the meantime, a string of earthquakes hit near Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.
However, neither NASA nor the United States government have given any explanation regarding these seemingly cinematic rumors that surface on the internet.
