space trackers: judica cordiglia bros.

A memorial weekend italiano extraterrestre stravaganza provided for your pleasure! Let's go Space Truckin'. First, the amazing Judica Cordiglia brothers who tracked radio transmissions of early space missions. In the late fifties, Achille and Giovanni set up an amateur tracking station just outside Turin, Italy in a former convalescent home at a place they called Torre Bert. Soviet secrecy inspired the two to seek out their communications. Turin, in Northern Italy, made Soviets the program of choice, since launches in the Caucasus flew over them. The brothers soon realized the need for additional help to make their station work. Maria Theresa, a sister, learned Russian to become their interpreter. Giovanni's fiancee, Laura Furbatto, became organizer of a worldwide network of amateur tracking stations: the Zeus Network.

The Cordiglia brothers became local space experts that led to a invitation on The Fair of Dreams (Fiera dei Sogni), a quiz show. The brothers won and the winnings afforded a personal visit in 1964 to NASA, a dream fulfilled. The amateur space trackers successfully intercepted beeps of Sputnik 1, Explorer 1, heard the dog Laika's heartbeat during Sputnik 2 and John Glenn's Mercury Friendship 7 flight. The amateur space trackers' career culminated with the Apollo 11 moon landing on June,20, 1969. The brothers soon realized though, television had taken away the mystery and with it their hobby was "finito", ended.

Notoriety follows the Cordiglia brothers with allegations their purported recordings of lost cosmonauts are fake. A prior post on the topic is also available, "lost cosmonauts: airbrushed from memory." The recordings include an "SOS to the World" in Morse Code from a soviet spacecraft as it fades into outer space on November, 28, 1960. The labored breathing and heartbeat of an unconscious cosmonaut near death recorded February 2, 1961. A heartrending plea of a woman cosmonaut as she burns up on re-entry May 23, 1961. A good list of dead cosmonauts can be found here, which includes several early suborbital fatalities. The wikipedia entry for Lost Cosmonauts is a valuable resource.

"Space Hackers The Judica Brothers" is a recent documentary of the Cordiglia brothers and the Torre Bert enclave and a wonderful story! Soviets irritated by the brothers' monitoring, once threw an aspersion the two were "space gangsters". Don't miss it! While others are enjoying la dolce vita this weekend, you can get a really sweet story!

lost cosmonauts: airbrushed from memory

Grigoriy Nelyubov's disappearance from the photo (pictured), and similar strokes, brought suspicion on the Soviet space program. The mysterious deletions also stoked curiosity about the ultimate fates of these airbrushed souls! Nelyubov, a 1963 drunken brawl dismissed him from the program and banishment to Siberia, is referred to as a "suicide by train" in 1966 by most historical accounts. James Oberg, a US gatekeeper, provides details on some airbrushed ex-personages in this Wired Science article, "Soviet Space Propaganda: Doctored Cosmonaut Photos". Oberg's take on dead cosmonauts is in his 1988 book, "Uncovering Soviet Disasters". Chapter 10 gives readers an idea of the layers of deception and disinformation. Valentin Bondarenko, a young cosmonaut, is one of the first deceptions by deletion. Oberg's recap of cosmonaut Georgiy Shonin's 1977 book, "The Very First Ones," where readers are first fed "...the existence of eight 'dropouts'...clearly indicating that all eight had left the program alive".

The tragic reality runs counter to a "lived happily ever after" tale with grim accounts at "The Lost Cosmonauts website". A desperate woman's plea in Russian in a recording on YouTube, is perhaps, the most compelling! It sounds, certainly, like a cosmonaut and as observed by their sister, "it doesn't sound like a tea party," in a fine film on the Judica Cordiglia brothers, "Space Hackers," who recorded the communications. The brothers were sophisticated and stand accused of hoaxing. A retelling of events at the dawn of the space age still make a fascinating story--great stuff!