In 1947, a highly controversial event occurred in Roswell, New Mexico, in which an UFO allegedly crashed on a ranch. The United States Air Force initially reported that they had recovered a “flying disc,” but later retracted that statement and claimed that the object was actually a weather balloon. The incident quickly became the subject of much speculation, with many believing that the military had actually recovered the wreckage of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and were covering up the truth. While Lockheed Martin took over the task of reverse-engineering the craft.