Vela Incident

The Vela Incident (sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash) was an unidentified "double flash" of light that was detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979 near the Prince Edward Islands or Antarctica. There is uncertainty as to the true nature of the incident though it is widely believed to have been the result of a nuclear detonation.

While a "double flash" signal is characteristic of a nuclear weapons test, the signal might have been a spurious electronic signal that was generated by an aging detector in an old satellite or a meteoroid or comet hitting the Vela satellite. No corroboration of an explosion, such as the presence of nuclear byproducts in the air, was ever publicly acknowledged, even though there were numerous passes in the area by U.S. Air Force planes that were specifically designed to detect airborne radioactive dust. Other examiners of the data, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and defense contractors, have come to the conclusion that the flash was a result of a nuclear detonation. Much of the information relating to the event remains classified.

The most common theory among those who believe that the flash was of nuclear origins was that it resulted from a joint South African and Israeli nuclear test The topic remains highly disputed today.