Editing Aurora (aircraft) (section)

===U.S. sighting claims===
A series of unusual [[sonic boom]]s was detected in [[Southern California]] beginning in mid-to-late 1991 and recorded by [[United States Geological Survey]] [[seismometer|sensor]]s across Southern California used to pinpoint [[earthquake]] [[epicenter]]s.<ref>Newton, Edmund. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-17-me-607-story.html "Secret Is Out on 'Quakes': It's a Spy Plane"], ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', 17 April 1992. Retrieved: 29 October 2017.</ref> The sonic booms were characteristic of a smaller vehicle, rather than of the 37-meter long [[Space Shuttle orbiter]]. Furthermore, neither the Shuttle nor [[NASA]]'s single SR-71B was operating on the days the booms had been registered.<ref>[http://www.area51zone.com/aircraft/aurora.shtml "Aurora."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110101071143/http://www.area51zone.com/aircraft/aurora.shtml |date=1 January 2011 }} ''area51zone.com,'' 29 September 2006.</ref> In the article, ''"In Plane Sight?"'' which appeared in the ''[[Washington City Paper]]'' on 3 July 1992 (pp.&nbsp;12–13), one of the seismologists, Jim Mori, noted: "We can't tell anything about the vehicle. They seem stronger than other sonic booms that we record once in a while. They've all come on Thursday mornings about the same time, between 4 and 7."<ref name="aemann.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk"/> Former NASA [[sonic boom]] expert Dom Maglieri studied the 15-year-old sonic boom data from the [[California Institute of Technology]] and has deemed that the data showed "something at 90,000&nbsp;ft (c. 27&nbsp;km), Mach 4 to Mach 5.2". He also said the booms did not look like those from aircraft that had traveled through the atmosphere many miles away at [[Los Angeles International Airport]]; rather, they appeared to be booms from a high-altitude aircraft directly above the ground, moving at high speeds.<ref>Sweetman, Bill. [http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3A3b8e5ffb-467d-4030-9b63-d3f52cea5a4e "Boom, Why Does O.C. Go Boom?"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111117085354/http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a3b8e5ffb-467d-4030-9b63-d3f52cea5a4e |date=17 November 2011 }} ''Aviation Weekly,'' 29 November 2010. Retrieved: 22 December 2010.</ref> The boom signatures of the two different aircraft patterns are wildly different.<ref name="secret" /> There was nothing particular to tie these events to any aircraft, but they served to increase the number of stories about the Aurora.
[[File:Aurora x-plane 1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.14|Artist's rendering of the Aurora from behind]]
On 23 March 1992, near [[Amarillo, Texas]], Steven Douglass photographed the "donuts on a rope" [[contrail]] and linked this sighting to distinctive sounds. He described the engine noise as: "strange, loud pulsating roar... unique... a deep pulsating rumble that vibrated the house and made the windows shake... similar to rocket engine noise, but deeper, with evenly timed pulses." In addition to providing the first photographs of the distinctive contrail previously reported by many, the significance of this sighting was enhanced by Douglass' reports of intercepts of radio transmissions: "Air-to-air communications... were between an AWACS aircraft with the call sign "Dragnet 51" from [[Tinker Air Force Base|Tinker AFB]], [[Oklahoma]], and two unknown aircraft using the call signs "Darkstar November" and "Darkstar Mike". Messages consisted of phonetically transmitted alphanumerics. It is not known whether this radio traffic had any association with the "pulser" that had just flown over Amarillo." ("Darkstar" is also a call sign of [[Airborne early warning and control|AWACS]] aircraft from a different squadron at Tinker AFB)<ref>''Aviation Week & Space Technology'', 11 May 1992, pp. 62–63.</ref> A month later, radio enthusiasts in California monitoring [[Edwards Air Force Base|Edwards AFB]] Radar (callsign "Joshua Control") heard early morning radio transmissions between Joshua and a high flying aircraft using the callsign "Gaspipe". "You're at 67,000 feet, 81 miles out" was heard, followed by "70 miles out now, 36,000 ft, above glideslope." As in the past, nothing linked these observations to any particular aircraft or program, but the attribution to the Aurora helped expand the legend.

In February 1994, a former resident of Rachel, Nevada, and Area 51 enthusiast, Chuck Clark, claimed to have filmed the Aurora taking off from the [[Area 51|Groom Lake facility]]. In the David Darlington book ''[[Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles]]'', he said:

<blockquote>I even saw the Aurora take off one {{nowrap|night{{tsp}}{{ndash}}{{tsp}}}}or an aircraft that matched the Aurora's reputed configuration: a sharp delta with twin tails about a hundred and thirty feet long. It taxied out of a lighted hangar at 2:30{{spaces}}a.m. and used a lot of runway to take off. It had one red light on top, but the minute the wheels left the runway, the light went off and that was the last I saw of it. I didn't hear it because the wind was blowing from behind me toward the base." I asked when this had taken place. "February 1994. Obviously they didn't think anybody was out there. It was thirty below zero – probably ninety below with the wind chill factor. I had hiked into White Sides from a different, harder way than usual, and stayed there two or three days among the rocks, under a camouflage tarp with six layers of clothes on. I had an insulated face mask and two sleeping bags, so I didn't present a heat signature. I videotaped the aircraft through a telescope with a five-hundred-millimeter f4 lens coupled via a C-ring to a high-eight digital video camera with five hundred and twenty scan lines of resolution, which is better than TV." The author then asked, "Where's the tape?" "Locked away. That's a legitimate spyplane; my purpose is not to give away legitimate national defense. When they get ready to unveil it, I'll probably release the tape."<ref>Darlington, David. ''Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles''. New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. 1997. {{ISBN|0-8050-4777-8}}.</ref></blockquote>