Things You Would Never Know

The Lost Cosmonauts

Italian brothers, Achille and Gian Judica-Cordiglia, had developed quite a passion for radios growing up. In fact, they had become very interested in building new ones, better ones, and much more powerful ones. During their early twenties, they began experimenting with the radios they put together. It just so happens that at this time, the Americans and the Russians were in a race to explore space and put men on the moon.

On October 4th, 1957, during their earlier experiments, they had picked up the Russian's satellite transmission, the "Sputnik," in their attic. Their interest had been peaked by stumbling onto this and so they decided to create a collapsible dish that they could put up and take down very quickly on their rooftop, and remained very secretive about it. After all, these activities would be the equivalent to us hacking in the CIA's database and snooping around because we were trying to figure out how to make a better firewall against pop-up ads.

Anyway, later that month, they intercepted a transmission of what sounded like a heartbeat to the young brothers. It sounded too fast to be a human heart, so they figured perhaps it was a dog's. The Russians' had announced in the newspaper of the first successful launch of a living creature into outer space shortly after that transmission. Sadly, the Russians were in such a rush to beat the Americans to these advances in science that they had not figured a way out to have Laika successfully returned to Earth. So basically they shot a dog out to space to suffocate to death. Awesome, right?

While the success outweighed the inability to bring the dog back home, this would foreshadow events to come. In November of 1960, the Bochum space observatory in west Germany reported intercepting radio signals from what they believed to have been a satellite. The brothers tuned in and after listening for nearly an hour, they picked up a signal. They began to hear hissing and then beeping. It sounded out to be like Morse code. A very specific code in fact. S.O.S.

But something was very wrong about this transmission, and the sound of it seemed eerie to the brothers. It didn't sound like a satellite because a satellite is in orbit around Earth. The Doppler effect enables the volume of the signal to become strong and weaker as it came closer and further away. This particular transmission, however, was fading out slowly but surely as if it was in one point in space just drifting further and further away. Had they just picked up an emergency signal sent out by the first human launched into outer space? Had they somehow fallen out of orbit and began to drift off into deep space?

February 2nd, of 1961 at about 11 in the evening the brothers once again picked up another transmission being sent from outer space. This one was even worse than the one preceding it. They listened closely as the transmission sent out the sounds of someone's last breaths. They reported having heard wheezing and struggled breathing of a suffocating cosmonaut. They had recorded the transmission and verified with a cardiologist that their theory were indeed correct. It was the sounds someone would make if they were out of oxygen.

Two days after that, the Russians announced a spaceship they had launched burned up in the atmosphere during re-entry, but were not forthcoming beyond that. Was this what the brothers had picked up and listened to?

In May 16th of 1961, the brothers had yet picked up another transmission from outer space. This time it was a female's voice. Around this time, the Americans had only held a small sub-orbital flight and the Soviets planned on having this female cosmonaut's flight to orbit the Earth seventeen times. Problem was she had been speaking in a very distressed manner, requesting for assistance of some kind. It wasn't very long before she began to scream about a fire in her capsule. Was this the voice of the first woman to venture into space as she burned up during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere?

Now here is the problem with this infamous story, the Soviets- at the time- were well known for covering up their failures. They would never announce a failure, or even admit that such events ever took place as it would look very bad on their part. So the question was proposed, that perhaps the brothers had set up the entire thing as a big hoax in an effort to gain attention. Kind of like how some people still think that we've never actually put a man on the moon, they were really in a Hollywood studio when they showed the astronauts putting the American flag on the moon, right? Yeah, like that.

Regardless of this, the brothers were hired by NASA because of their ability to hack into NASA's transmissions. They became very successful. After the initial early years of this space race, the Judica-Cordiglia brothers quit picking up Russian transmissions from outer space.

Here is a short and sweet list that the Italian brothers reported to have picked up:
May 1960 - Unnamed cosmonaut lost when his orbiting space capsule veered off course.
November 1960 - The brothers picked up an SOS message in Morse code from a troubled spacecraft.
February 1961 - Recorded the suffocation of a cosmonaut.
April 1961 - Just prior to Yuri Gagarin’s flight, a capsule circled the Earth three times before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
May 1961 - Weak calls for help from an orbiting capsule.
October 1961 - A Soviet spacecraft veered off course and vanished into deep space.
November 1962 - A space capsule bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere during re-entry and disappeared.
November 1963 - Unnamed female cosmonaut perished on re-entry.
April 1964 - Cosmonaut lost when capsule burnt up on re-entry.

And that is the fact of the week! Sorry, I failed to post last week. I figured to make up for it, I would try and post a good ol' conspiracy theory story. But here are a few links for everyone if they want to read more information on these recordings and the Soviets. I've also included a link to a YouTube video of what is reportedly said to be one of the recordings the brothers made of the transmissions.

Female Cosmonaut Recording:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sgc1I9sjfc

Basic Story:
http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/awesomemysteries/phantom_cosmonauts.ht...

This article includes other claims made by cosmonaut candidates and engineers involved in the space race surrounding the deaths and recordings the brothers had picked up. It also has new information that until recently, the Russians had kept secret. I guess now they are being forced to air out their laundry, huh?
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1302/lost_in_space.html