Day: May 20, 1978

Project UFO Sighting 4011: The Dollhouse Incident

Project UFOThe 11th episode of Harold Jack Bloom’s sci-fi series Project UFO airs on NBC, portraying fictionalized investigations into what the show claims are actual cases from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigations. William Jordan and Caskey Swaim star. David Hedison (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Fly) guest stars.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Pioneer Venus Orbiter launched

Pioneer VenusNASA launches the 1,100 pound Pioneer Venus Orbiter, designed to orbit Venus for a year to study the planet’s atmosphere and its interaction with other space phenomena. Though launched separately, the two Pioneer Venus spacecraft will arrive at Venus within days of one another in December 1978. The Orbiter takes radar observations of the cloud-shrouded planet, from which the first surface map of Venus is derived. As with many other unmanned NASA spacecraft designed for relatively short-duration missions, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter outlives its design lifespan, staying fully functional into the 1990s and eventually becoming the only American spacecraft to view Halley’s Comet in 1986.