Mary Anne Miarecki of Hardwick, Mass., flanked by family members Megan Tabb, left, and Isabella Tabb of Springfield, Mass., take in the sights at Exeter's UFO Festival on Saturday.
When it comes to aliens, space exploration and the existential questions that arise around unearthly what-ifs, New Hampshire loves both the science and the fiction.
Just don't tell anyone in Exeter the lore around the 1965 UFO sighting may be part of the fiction.
"The Incident at Exeter," which really took place in Kensington, birthed its own annual festival, which has been drawing up to 6,000 believers for more than a decade. But there's much more to it than that.
There's the should-be-obvious -- the first American in space and fifth man to walk on the moon was Derry's Alan Shepard. And the not-so-obvious -- a U.S. Space Force base is in rural New Boston and an 82-foot-wide dish in the middle of nowhere in Hancock is mapping the universe and tracking asteroids.
Add in Betty and Barney Hill's reported 1961 close encounter with aliens in the White Mountains, and Christa McAuliffe's star-crossed selection as America's first teacher in space, and it's clear New Hampshire has a deep connection with the cosmos.
As Exeter's Bob Cox likes to say, alien and space stories have captured the state's imagination because many residents were around for Shepard's flights, the 1965 sighting, and major advances in space exploration.
"I think it's unique because (the UFO sighting) happened here in 1965. It's not like it happened over a 100 or so years ago," said Cox, who is one of the organizers of the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club's UFO Festival, held every Labor Day weekend.
The incident
So what exactly happened in Exeter -- er, Kensington?
First off, the location has never been in dispute, but back then Exeter police were the first on the scene in Kensington because the tiny town didn't have its own department.
As Cox tells it, on Sept. 3, 1965, Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking home from seeing his girlfriend and "got a ride into the Kensington area. When they approached Kensington, they saw a light in the field."
The 18-year-old Muscarello told the Exeter police he saw a flying object behind a barn. When police arrived, they saw an object hovering in the spot Muscarello had described.
"They took him in a squad car and drove back out there and they saw it too," Cox said.
Police and investigators from across the U.S. tried to figure out what happened.
Officials at nearby Pease Air Force Base told local law enforcement the UFO was related to a test they were running on aircraft, Cox said.
Today, the UFO festival draws not just fun-seeking UFO enthusiasts, but well-regarded expert speakers, Cox said. With trolley rides through town, merchants and a decked-out town bandstand, the festival has taken on a life of its own.
"One of the policemen who was on the police force at the time was honored at our last festival. There are people in town and in surrounding communities who actually lived through this," Cox said.
"Not everyone may be interested in UFOs, but there's a lot of fun things for the kids to do," Cox said. "And there are serious people who come to listen to speakers and see the presentations."
Cox, who moved to New Hampshire in 1978, said there have been UFO sightings all over the area.
"I've got to admit, I hadn't really thought about UFOs until I got involved with this," the 82-year-old said.
The dish
The U.S. National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Long Baseline Array (a name almost as long as the program's reach) operates a huge antenna in the woods of Hancock.
The VLBA, for short, is a network of 10 radio telescopes from Hawaii to New Hampshire. The antennas work together as one enormous telescope through a process called interferometry.
Astronomers can point all the telescopes at the same object in space to collect data for high-resolution images of things millions of light years away from Earth in "unprecedented detail," said Jill Malusky, a spokesperson for the program.
"The VLBA is important because there is no other instrument of its kind in the U.S. -- one that spans nearly 5,000 miles," Malusky said.
Radio telescopes are different from optical telescopes because they collect signals humans cannot see. They can also be used during daylight hours and "see" through dust.
"Space is actually very dusty," Malusky said.
The VLBA has been around for 31 years and has collected all kinds of interesting data, she said.
But can the Hancock antenna find aliens?
"Everyone asks about aliens. I think it's fun," Malusky said. "Yes, it can relate to finding life in the universe, but not in an action-movie type of way."
Radio telescopes can find clues of extraterrestrial life by seeing the building blocks of life or by searching for non-organic signals created by intelligent life, she said.
Although the telescope network has found organic molecules, it hasn't found any evidence of otherworldly beings yet.
For a practical application though, look no further than global positioning systems.
"Believe it or not, the VLBA helps make your GPS work. The VLBA was created in part by (and is often used by) the U.S. Naval Observatory for critical measurements of Earth's orientation, which is essential for the accurate functioning of GPS systems," she said.
The base
The New Boston Space Force Station (SFS) has been operational for more than 60 years in several different capacities
Part of the five-year-old U.S. Space Force, which has its headquarters in Colorado, the base is part of a network of sites operating 24 hours a day. It provides satellite command and control capability to hundreds of military, government and civilian satellites performing intelligence, weather, navigation, early-warning and communications operations.
The base was "originally established in 1942 as a practice area for bombers and fighter planes from nearby Grenier Army Air Field (which has since become Manchester-Boston Regional Airport). Starting in 1959, it was turned into a satellite-tracking station," according to the station's website. It was transferred from the Air Force to the new Space Force in 2020.
The Space Force now has dozens of bases in 11 time zones. New Hampshire's base comprises nearly 3,000 acres and is the largest outside of the Colorado hub.
Folks in New Boston like to call their town the unofficial "gravity center of the world." Residents revel in their fascination with aliens, decorating several floats during this year's Fourth of July parade with blow-up alien costume, stuffed cows caught in tractor beams, and references to the movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."
The man
There'd be no Pinkerton Academy Astros and Derry wouldn't be called "Spacetown" if not for Shepard, one of the Mercury Seven astronauts who made his landmark exit from Earth in 1961 aboard Freedom 7.
He was also the commander of Apollo 14 in 1971, the fourth of NASA's seven planned moon-landing missions.
Shepard also famously drove two golf balls from the lunar surface, but they didn't go quite as far as legend would have it.
To this day, though, the Derry police sport shoulder patches displaying a space capsule orbiting the moon and Pinkerton continues to name things after its most famous alum.
Shepard was also a central figure in the popular book "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, its movie adaptation (Shepard was played by Scott Glenn) and TV shows that followed about the American space program.
From Earth to the moon, New Hampshire has played a strikingly significant role in space science, and for those whose mantra is "I want to believe."