NARA RG59: NASA - Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question (1963)
Date
July 18, 1963
Document Type
Policy Memo
Authentication
VerifiedRedaction Status
▐ Partially RedactedIssuing Authority
Executive Office of the President / National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Summary
A six-page memorandum dated July 18, 1963, from Maxwell W. Hunter II (Member, Professional Staff, NASA Executive Office) to Robert F. Packard (Office of International Scientific Affairs, Department of State), subject "Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question." Hunter writes that during recent discussions - including deliberations on "BNSP Task I" - the question has arisen of "what to do if an alien intelligence is discovered in space." The memo systematically addresses three scenarios: (1) chemical/biological Martians who have colonized the moon for resource mining, as hypothesized by flying saucer advocates, and for which "our current national policy would be made to order"; (2) an interstellar civilization that has sustained space exploration for 200,000 years and would therefore be a qualitatively different military threat; (3) a faster-than-light civilization, for which Hunter recommends the U.S. "negotiate fast." Hunter also references as circumstantial evidence: anomalous infrared hot spots on lunar far side scans, the failure of all lunar and planetary probes despite "major efforts on the part of two very successful earth orbiting nations," and the Lunik III far-side moon pictures that "show no details of consequence." Hunter concludes that no preparation is possible at present because "no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic." Filed under NARA Record Group 59 (Records of the Department of State). Released via PURSUE Release 1, February 25, 2026.
Significance
A remarkable document revealing that in 1963, a senior NASA professional staff member was formally writing to the State Department about the U.S. government policy implications of alien contact - and explicitly referencing flying saucer advocates' Mars mining hypothesis as a serious analytical scenario. The memo's reference to "BNSP Task I" (Basic National Security Policy) places this analysis at the highest levels of Cold War national security planning. Hunter's observation that "no lunar or planetary probe of significance has been successful, in spite of major efforts on the part of two very successful earth orbiting nations" - and his suggestion that "someone was denying us deep space" - introduces an interference hypothesis that would later become central to some UAP research frameworks. The document establishes that formal NASA-to-State Department alien contact policy consultation was occurring in 1963, predating the Brookings Report's public discussion of similar questions by three years.