Roswell is most popularly known for having its name attached to what is now called the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, even though the crash site of the alleged UFO was some 75 miles from Roswell and closer to Corona. The investigation and debris recovery was handled by the local Roswell Army Air Field. The Roswell UFO incident was a report of an object that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly a spacecraft containing extraterrestrial life. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of controversy, and conspiracy theories as to the true nature of the object that crashed. The United States Armed Forces maintains what was recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to a classified program named Mogul; many UFO proponents maintain that an alien craft was found, and its occupants were captured, and the military engaged in a cover-up. The incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name Roswell synonymous with UFOs. It is the most publicized and controversial of alleged UFO incidents.
The Office of the United States Secretary of the Air Force conducted an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two reports. The first, released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from Project Mogul. The second report, released in 1997, concluded reports of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, innocently transformed memories of the recovery of dummies in military programs like Operation High Dive conducted in the 1950s, and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents. The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancy with the years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible. But at the same time, several high-profile UFO researchers discounted the possibility that the incident had anything to do with aliens.
The quote of an assistant professor of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “So they [extraterrestrials] have the type of technology to visit us and are doing so in secret, but they accidentally slip up every once in a while and get spotted and then turn away? Versus, humans are imperfect and our eyes are imperfect and our optical processing is imperfect.”