All language subtitles for Mysteries.Unearthed.with.Danny.Trejo.S02E08.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[tense music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can
be buried anywhere.

Under the earth,

[volcano blasts]

[sonar beeps]
beneath the sea,

[plane whooshing]

or even right
under our own feet.

[coins jingling]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find
can change history.

Tonight, secrets from the skies,

like a flying predator that
dealt death from above.

- This was a massive killer.

- They've never seen
anything like this.

[pterosaur caws]

- [Danny] To a mysterious
rock that fell from the stars.

- It turns out to
be really heavy.

He's shocked,

and he thinks that maybe
this stone is full of gold.

- But this is not made of gold.

It's something even
better and more rare.

- [Danny] To a strange
skull found in a cave

- It's abnormally
large and bulbous.

The eyes seem to
be set far apart.

I mean, this is right
out of a horror movie.

- Join us now, because
nothing stays hidden forever.

[mysterious music]

[tense music]

- It's 2014 in Cincinnati,
and a widow named Carol Knight

is going through her
late husband's belongings

in his office.

Much of what she's finding is
exactly what you would expect.

Some papers, an old,
well-worn pair of sneakers,

that kind of thing.

- And as she's looking in
the back of the closet,

she comes upon this white bag.

She lifts it up, and she can
hear it make a loud clank.

- She opens it,

and inside, it's loaded with
this technical equipment.

There are these metal coils

that run to these
odd-looking sensors.

There's like straps, tools, and
a small, 1960s film camera.

Usually, stuff like this might
just get tossed in the trash

or maybe donated to
Goodwill or something.

- [Danny] But these
aren't just random items.

They belong to
Carol's late husband,

legendary astronaut
Neil Armstrong.

- Obviously, in the
astronaut hierarchy,

Neil Armstrong sits
at the very top.

He's the first person
to set foot on the Moon,

and in July 1969,
650 million people

huddled around their
television sets

to watch that moment happen.

[people cheering]
[intense music]

- Obviously, any artifact
associated with him

or the Apollo 11 mission is
going to be extremely valuable.

- [Hakeem] After he dies in
2012, Carol gives curators

from the National Air and Space
Museum access to his office.

They come in and
they collect anything

that they think might be
important for the museum.

- [Martin] Two years later,

when Carol finds this
bag in the closet,

she doesn't know
what to make of it.

So before throwing it all away,

Carol calls the museum again

and sends curator Alan Needell

a photograph of the
contents of the bag.

- [Danny] When Alan
sees the photos,

he can't believe his eyes.

- [Hakeem] This looks like stuff
from the Apollo 11 mission,

and this means that these items

have been to the Moon.

- [Neil] That's one
small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

- Everybody knows the
Westinghouse TV camera

that took this famous shot.

- [Danny] But there
was a second camera,

a 16mm mounted on top
of the lunar module.

- [Martin] Armstrong and
Aldrin used this camera to

film themselves while they're
tearing around the Moon,

taking samples of Moon
dust and Moon rocks,

and planting the American flag.

- [Danny] So how did this
priceless piece of history

end up buried in a closet
for more than 40 years?

- [Paul] It seems that
nobody but Armstrong

knew that this camera
was in the closet,

because it wasn't supposed

to even come back to
Earth in the first place.

- [Hakeem] When it
comes to space travel,

there is no more valuable
commodity than mass.

They even have a saying:
"Every ounce matters."

- [Martin] When Apollo
11 returns to Earth,

they come back with 50
pounds of Moon rocks

that they didn't leave
Cape Canaveral with.

So, they had to leave
an equivalent weight

of items behind to
compensate for the rocks.

- [Danny] But Armstrong
didn't want to leave

the prized camera on the Moon.

[crowd cheering]

- [Paul] It seems that Armstrong
makes an executive decision

to take the 16mm
film camera back,

and he keeps this secret.

He doesn't tell NASA,

he doesn't even tell
his wife for decades.

- [Danny] And now,
Armstrong's secret camera

could turn out to
be worth a fortune.

- [Geoffrey] Buzz
Aldrin's Apollo 11 jacket

sells for $2.8 million in 2022,

[gavel slams]

and bags used to
collect rock samples

sell for $2 million at auction,

and they don't even have
moon rock in them anymore.

So, can you imagine what
this camera would sell for?

[camera shutter clicking]

- [Hakeem] Carol Knight,
however, does not cash it in.

Instead, she donates the camera

to the Space Museum
for public display.

You can still go see it today,

and it helps to ensure
that Armstrong's legacy

will carry on.

- Uncovering a priceless NASA
relic in a closet is one thing,

but imagine literally
stumbling over something

even more valuable
that fell from the sky.

[tense music]

- The Maryborough Park
in Melbourne, Australia,

is right in the middle
of the Goldfields region,

which is where the 19th
century gold rush boomed.

Its golden age is over,
but amateur gold rushers

and tourists still
try their luck,

hoping to get the odd nugget.

- In 2015, David Hole is
walking around the park,

not expecting to find much.

He digs here and there for fun,

but as he's walking through
some thick, red clay,

he practically trips
over a medium-sized rock.

- He wonders if something
might be under it.

He tries to move
it out of the way,

but it turns out
to be really heavy.

He's shocked,

and he thinks that maybe
this stone is full of gold.

- David excitedly lugs
the stone back home,

and once he's there, he
breaks out his angle grinder

to crack it open and
get to the prize inside.

[grinder screeching]

But as he goes to cut it open,

the angle grinder
can't even make a dent.

- [Hugo] Then he tries smashing
it with a sledgehammer,

[sledgehammer slams]

but the sledge just
bounces right back off.

He tries acid, but
again, no dice.

[acid sizzling]

- He's never seen
anything like it.

This thing has not
a scratch on it.

Whatever it actually is,
it's clearly no gold nugget.

- Unlike the rock itself,

David's dreams of a big
payday are shattered.

So he brings it to
the Melbourne Museum

to see if anyone can figure
out what exactly it is.

- [Danny] Museum scientists
examine the indestructible lump

and have both good and
bad news for David.

- [Paul] The bad news is
that, as David suspected,

this is not made of gold.

But the good news

is that it's something
even better and more rare.

It's a meteorite.

- Over the last 37 years,
this museum curator

has examined thousands of rocks

people thought were meteorites,

but so far, only two had
delivered on that promise.

So finding a meteorite
is extremely rare.

- [Danny] To unlock
the secrets inside,

scientists need to look deeper.

- [Hugo] Carbon dating puts
the rock's arrival on Earth

somewhere between about
100 to 1,000 years ago.

But to get the full story,

the lab has to crack
this rock open,

which is easier said than done.

- [Paul] The outer shells
of meteorites are hardened

by their passage through
the Earth's atmosphere,

which generates an
enormous amount of heat.

It's like putting
them in a super forge,

the same way we
would harden steel.

- To crack it open, they need
the hardest tool they have.

It takes a diamond blade saw
to finally cut into the rock.

- [Paul] What they find inside
is a blend of rare minerals

and a high
concentration of iron.

Based on its makeup,

experts believe that it came
from the huge asteroid belt

that sits between
Mars and Jupiter

and may have even
been part of a core

of a planet that failed to form.

- [Danny] Incredibly,
David's rock turns out to be

far more valuable than gold.

- [Hugo] Because they're so
rare, meteorites can be worth

anywhere between $10
to $1,000 per gram.

This one weighs 37 pounds,
or about 17,000 grams,

so it could be worth millions.

- [Kavitha] For now, David's
meteorite is on display

at the Melbourne Museum.

Time will tell if David decides

to finally cash in on his
find or keep it in the museum

as the world's most
indestructible nest egg.

lost in World War II,

they uncover a mystery
no one expected.

[tense music]

- In the spring of 1991,

explorers from the
Scientific Search Project

of New York City are
scouring the ocean floor

off Fort Lauderdale,

looking for gold from
old Spanish galleons.

- Graham Hawkes is
leading a search

using a small submarine
with a remote camera,

[lens whirring]

but as he patrols the sea floor,

he sees something
that distracts him.

- What Hawkes and his
team have just found

is the wreckage of
a World War II-era,

TBM Avenger torpedo bomber,

and it's not alone.

- They find not two, not three,
but five Avenger bombers

all on the bottom
of the Atlantic

and all within about
a mile of each other.

They seem too close together
for it to be a coincidence.

The only logical
conclusion seems to be

that they were flying together

and then all went
down at the same time.

[water splashing]

- [Danny] To the
crew's historians,

the clues point to a
single infamous case,

the disappearance of Flight 19.

- [John] In December 1945,

three months after the
end of World War II,

five Avenger bombers take off

from the Fort
Lauderdale naval base

on a routine training mission.

The lead plane starts
experiencing compass trouble,

and the pack gets disoriented.

[switches clicking]
[radar beeping]

- [Andrew] Radio contact
with the naval base

in Fort Lauderdale becomes
fainter and fainter.

The base is struggling

to track the position
of the planes.

It's almost as if
something is interrupting

or interfering with the signal.

- Eventually, radio contact
with all five planes is lost.

[airplane engines whirring]
[intense music]

Night falls, and the pilots
and planes of Flight 19

are never heard from again.

- [Danny] The planes vanish
without a trace in a vast,

merciless area of ocean known
as the Bermuda Triangle.

- [Martin] No other incident

fuels the mystique of
the Bermuda Triangle

more than the loss of Flight 19.

So, solving that mystery
while looking for Spanish gold

could be the only thing luckier

than actually
finding Spanish gold.

- [Danny] The find is
too compelling to ignore,

so Hawkes' team takes a
closer look at the planes.

- They need to look for
identifying markers,

so they comb through the videos,

and first, they make out
the letters F and T,

which means that these
planes did take off

from Fort Lauderdale,
just like Flight 19.

- [Andrew] They also make out
the number 28 on the tail

of one plane, which
partially matches up

to one of the missing
Flight 19 planes.

So at this point,
they're very excited.

- [John] Then they find
more tail numbers,

but these do not line
up with Flight 19,

and at least some of these
planes are under-armed,

which suggests that they're
actually older planes

than the ones who
flew Flight 19.

- [Danny] As Hawkes and his
team uncover more evidence,

it starts to tell
a different story,

one that only
deepens the mystery.

- [Geoffrey] It turns out
that not only is this not

the Flight 19 group, but
these planes, which crashed

basically on top of each other,

didn't even crash
at the same time.

- [Andrew] These crashes span
years, going back to 1943.

So now, instead of solving
one Bermuda Triangle mystery,

researchers now have
two unsolved mysteries.

[water bubbling]

- The Bermuda Triangle
isn't the only place

famous aircraft vanish.

Sometimes, they turn up in
the last place you'd expect.

[tense music]

- [John] It's the fall of
2023, and business partners

Dustin Riach and Jason Rivas

have just popped the
lock on a storage unit

in Van Nuys, California.

They won an online auction

for the contents of
the unit, sight unseen.

- Rivas calls the gamble,
"shooting dice in the dark."

These storage units can
come packed with old clothes

or holiday decorations,

or sometimes even
hazardous materials.

On occasion, though,

they might actually
have something valuable.

- They pop open some boxes,

and they find some nitrate
film rolls from the 1800s

and the 1900s, which might
be worth a couple of bucks,

but it's really not
anything of profound value.

- [Paul] Then they start
opening some garbage bags,

and Jason pulls out a
model of a spaceship.

- They realize that this is
a model of the USS Enterprise

and figure that it might have
some value to Star Trek fans.

- [Danny] Dustin and Jason
decide to list it on eBay

to see how much
they can get for it.

- [Paul] As soon as
the auction goes live,

people start freaking out
because the base of this model

has a business card with
the name of the model maker,

Richard C. Datin.

- Richard C. Datin
is nothing short

of a legend in the
Star Trek community.

In fact, he built
the original model

of the Starship
Enterprise in 1966.

He built the one that goes
soaring across the screen

in the opening credits of
Gene Roddenberry's series.

- [Danny] But that original
piece of Trekkie treasure

has been missing for decades,

and fans online think this
could be the original prototype.

- Back in 1979,

the makers of "Star
Trek: The Motion Picture"

borrowed the model
from Gene Roddenberry,

the show's creator,
and never gave it back,

even though Gene would
send letter after letter,

begging for its return.

- Dustin and Jason
pull the item from eBay

and bring it to the Heritage
Auction House for verification.

Sure enough, this is the
original Enterprise model

that's been missing
for over 40 years,

and its value is
estimated at $800,000.

- [Danny] To this
day, nobody knows

how the model ended up
in the storage unit,

but the discovery
sends shockwaves

through the Star Trek universe,
and it doesn't take long

for the original creator's
family to step in.

- [Adam] Now, even though
the show's creator,

Gene Roddenberry died in
1991, his son, Gene Jr.,

hears about the model,
and he wants it back.

I mean, his dad
didn't give it away.

His dad loaned it out.

He feels it should definitely
be part of his estate.

- [Martin] Rivas and Riach
strike a deal to return

the model to Roddenberry's son

in exchange for $500,000.

It's not $800,000,

but it's a lot more than
they expected to get

out of the model when
they posted it on eBay.

- [Danny] Exploring the ocean
can reveal strange things.

In 2022, divers uncovered a
tragic piece of space history.

[tense music]

- It's 2022 and underwater
explorer Mike Barnette

and wreck specialist
Jimmy Gadomski

are diving off the coast of
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

[water splashing]

They're part of a
documentary crew

searching for a
downed rescue plane

that went missing in the 1940s.

- The particular aircraft
that they're looking for

is a PBM Mariner flying boat.

It's got a large superstructure,

and it'll be easily recognizable

because of its top-mounted
inverted gull wings.

- On the ocean floor,

Mike spots a shape that's
buried under coral sand,

and his gut is leading
him to believe that

it's part of a wing of
that PBM Mariner plane.

So he decides to check it out.

- [Paul] They use blowers
to delicately remove sand

and coral fragments
from the object,

but as the sand blows off,

they see something that
doesn't make sense.

- They uncover what appears
to be a series of white bricks

or cobblestones
mounted to the object.

- Even though it appears to have
been buried for a long time,

these bricks are
still very white

with no signs of any
rust or oxidation.

They seem to be
made of a composite

that neither of them recognize.

- [Danny] Mike realizes this
isn't a World War II plane,

but the location of the
wreck gives him another idea.

- [Paul] They're just offshore
from Cape Canaveral,

which launches
rockets all the time,

and parts of rockets,
like boosters,

are designed to fall back into
the ocean from 50 miles up.

But this thing is flat and wide,

and so it can't be
a rocket booster.

- [Kavitha] As he
heads back to shore,

Mike calls a former
astronaut friend

named Bruce Melnick
to look at the video.

It takes Melnick
all of two seconds

to recognize those white bricks.

- [Martin] These are heat tiles

of the type that were
used on the Space Shuttle

to protect it from
heat during reentry.

- [Danny] Then,
Melnick says something

that stops everyone
in their tracks.

- Melnick is sure that
if there's a big piece

of a Space Shuttle just
off the coast of Florida,

it belonged to Challenger.

[rocket whooshing]
[pensive music]

- [Mission Control] Challenger,
go with throttle up.

[crowd cheering]

[explosion blasts]

- [Martin] When Space
Shuttle Challenger detonates

in the skies above Cape
Canaveral in January 1986,

it sends the entire
country into mourning.

It kills all seven crew members,

including school teacher
Christa McAuliffe,

who was supposed to be the
first civilian in space.

- Obviously, there's a scramble

to see what caused
this horrific tragedy.

So the Navy undertakes

the biggest salvage
operation in history,

but it's an incredibly
difficult mission

because debris is spread across
500 square miles of ocean.

- [Paul] They collect over
100 tons of wreckage,

and that wreckage,
combined with film footage,

reveals that the
fault is an O-ring,

a little rubber gasket
in a rocket booster

that was responsible for
triggering the explosion.

- [Danny] Mike brings
footage from his dive

to NASA Program
Director Mike Ciannilli,

hoping to confirm
that what they found

truly is a piece of
the Challenger Shuttle.

- And I'm always
a little cautious

because, as you know,
we've launched rockets

for over 70 years, so there's
a lot of objects out there,

but, you know, after looking at

the object in greater detail,

you've discovered Challenger.

[sighs] I certainly
can't thank you enough

for showing me this.

It's powerful.

- [Martin] Everyone who was
alive and conscious at the time

remembers where they
were when it happened.

Seeing this artifact

is enough to bring you right
back to that moment in history.

- Lots of deadly things
can descend from above,

but few are as frightening
as one giant predator

that once ruled
over Canada's skies.

[tense music]

- In 1992, a professional
nature photographer

explores the snow-covered
terrain in Alberta, Canada.

As she scans the
blank, white canvas

and contemplates her next shot,

she spots something
odd on the ground.

And as she gets up close,

she realizes it
could be a fossil.

- She's curious.

She gently chips away
at the frozen soil

all around this object,

and sure enough,
she begins to see

a massive form take shape.

- It looks like a long
neck, gigantic wing bones,

and a rib cage.

Now, she's no dinosaur expert,

but she does feel
like she's stumbled

onto something special.

- [Micha] She calls the
Royal Tyrrell Museum,

and once their paleontologists
look at the specimen,

they determine it's
a kind of pterosaur

known as Quetzalcoatlus,
a giant, flying reptile

that once ruled the skies
77 million years ago.

- It's a magnificent find,

but in the fossil
world, this is old news

since the species was
already discovered in Texas

back in 1972.

So the fossils are exhumed
and basically forgotten about.

- [Danny] Sometimes, however,

even the experts
can miss something.

- In 2019, another
team of paleontologists

pulls the fossils out of
mothballs to take a second look.

But this time, looking
at the morphology,

they see something
doesn't add up.

- [Don] The neck on this
specimen is shorter

and wider than the
Quetzalcoatlus from Texas.

They've never seen
anything like this.

This is a new, badass
species of a super predator.

- [Sami] Like her Texas cousin,
this was a massive killer.

We're talking a
32-foot wingspan,

which is equivalent to a
four-seater Cessna plane.

The head was huge,

about three times longer than
the actual length of its body.

In fact, one expert
described it as

a giant, flying murder head.

[pterosaur caws]

- [Micah] This ancient,
flying eating machine

is dubbed Cryodrakon boreas,

Greek for frozen dragon
of the north wind.

- [Danny] But around the
lab and in the press,

it becomes known
as the Ice Dragon.

- [Don] It likely fed on a diet
of lizards and baby dinos,

but because this Ice
Dragon had no teeth,

it would swallow prey whole
using its powerful neck muscles.

- [Danny] But for this
particular Ice Dragon,

dinner didn't go as planned.

- [Sami] The Alberta specimen
is covered in battle scars.

In fact, one of the leg fossils

has a velociraptor
tooth embedded into it.

Experts can't tell if this is
what killed the Ice Dragon,

but what they can tell
is that it died young,

probably a teenager.

- [Don] It's the first of its
kind ever found in Canada

and one of the best-preserved
flying reptiles

ever discovered
on the continent,

taken out before it had realized

its full, terrifying potential.

- [Danny] For centuries,

people have looked to
the skies for answers.

But in Mexico,

one teenager finds
something buried underground

that seems to come
from the stars.

[tense music]

- It's the 1930s, and
somewhere in Copper Canyon,

about 100 miles south
of Chihuahua, Mexico,

a teenage girl on vacation

stumbles across
an abandoned mine.

- This area is littered

with these old
abandoned mine shafts,

and the girl's parents tell
her to stay away from them

'cause they could be dangerous.

Naturally, her curiosity
gets the best of her.

She goes in, and she's
crawling through the dust

and the dirt, even though the
ceiling of one of these mines

could collapse in on
her at any moment.

- At the end of one tunnel,

she comes across something
that stops her in her tracks.

In the corner of this
dark, dusty cavern,

she makes out what
looks like a body.

- And as she gets closer to it,

she sees it is an
adult skeleton.

[dramatic music]

- [Danny] As she
continues looking around,

she notices something chilling.

- Next to that skeleton
is a mound of dirt,

and sticking out from
it is this small,

misshapen skeleton hand,

and that little hand
is holding hands

with the first skeleton.

I mean, this is right
out of a horror movie.

- [Don] Still unafraid,
this 13-year-old girl

starts uncovering
the second skeleton.

The first thing she notices

is the body is the
size of a child.

- But when she
gets to the skull,

she can tell that
it looks strange.

Compared to the
rest of the body,

the skull is unnaturally
large and bulbous,

with wide-set eyes.

It's so strange that
she just has to have it.

- [Don] She winds up taking
both skulls home with her

and tucks them away
in a storage area

where they stay
undisturbed for decades.

- [Danny] After the
girl passes away,

the skulls end up in the hands

of family friends who
turn over the specimens

to a researcher named Lloyd Pye.

- [Don] Pye is not your typical
biologist or researcher.

He's an author and
proponent of what's called

the intervention theory,
which basically argues

that aliens visited the Earth
and, among other things,

genetically contributed
to modern humans.

- [Paul] As Pye studies the
skull, he gets very excited.

He remarks that the bulbous
head and offset eyes

are consistent with
alleged eyewitness accounts

of so-called gray aliens.

Gray aliens are those
stereotypical, big-headed,

big-eyed aliens often
depicted in science fiction.

- [Danny] Pye is convinced
that the skull is not human

and names it the
Starchild Skull.

- [Micah] He looks at the
skull and wonders now

if this might be evidence
of an alien-human hybrid,

essentially the missing link
that he's been looking for.

He raises money to
do carbon dating

and DNA testing of the skull.

- [Hakeem] When his
test results come back,

Pye claims that
they show the skull

dates back to 900 years ago.

The sample shows
lots of human DNA,

but Pye claims that
there are elements

that the lab can't account for,

and Pye argues that these
holes in the DNA sample

must be where the alien
contributions are.

- [Don] Eventually,
mainstream scientists

are able to retest
samples from the skull

and fill in some of
those previous gaps

in the skull's DNA.

Turns out, they
disagree with Lloyd.

- [Micah] They argue
that the Starchild Skull

is not evidence of a
gray alien-human hybrid.

Instead, they say
that it's a male human

with a birth defect,

probably like hydrocephalus,

informerly known as
water on the brain,

which can cause the
kinds of features

that appear in this skull.

- But Pye and his followers
are not backing down,

and no scientist or evidence

is going to dissuade
them from their beliefs.

- [Don] Lloyd fights this battle
right until he dies in 2013,

eight decades after the
Starchild Skull is pulled

from that abandoned
mineshaft outside Chihuahua.

As for his followers,

they believe the truth
is still out there.

- Almost a century later,

another teenager makes
an incredible find,

one that lies far
beyond our solar system.

[tense music]

- [Paul] It's 2019,

and 17-year-old,
aspiring astrophysicist

and Star Wars
superfan, Wolf Cukier,

has landed his dream
job as a NASA intern.

In addition to
standard intern duties

like fetching coffee
and making copies,

he's tasked with analyzing
data of variations

in star brightness using
NASA's TESS satellite.

- [Don] TESS stands for

Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite,

which is a fancy acronym for a
very powerful space telescope

that is shot into orbit in 2018

to look for planets
outside our solar system.

- [Hakeem] He's asked to comb
through brightness data,

also known as a
star's light curve,

which is essentially its
brightness versus time.

These aren't pretty
pictures of stars.

These are pretty much
just dots on the page.

If the brightness
doesn't change,

the dot stays in the same place.

If it gets dimmer,
the dot goes down.

For the scientists, this
is kind of like grunt work,

but for Wolf, as an intern,

he is in heaven.

- [Paul] On day three
of his internship,

Wolf stumbles upon a light curve

that gets his blood pumping.

- [Hakeem] It's
a two-star system

that sits in the
Pictor constellation.

As he's looking at
this light curve,

he sees a dip that
comes in intervals.

This represents the star dimming

and then coming back
to full brightness.

That suggests a third object
orbiting both of these stars.

- [Don] An excited Wolf
leaps to his feet,

straightens his name tag,

and, in his most
confident intern voice,

tells his NASA supervisor

he thinks he's got
something worth looking at.

- [Danny] When Wolf's boss
looks at the computer screen,

he is absolutely stunned.

- [Paul] This intern, on
his third day of the job,

somehow, in the cold,
expansive space,

1,300 light-years away,

has stumbled across a
previously undiscovered planet,

orbiting two stars at once.

- [Don] Now, if you're a
Star Wars fan like Wolf,

you know that Luke Skywalker's
home planet had two suns,

and just like
Tatooine in Star Wars,

if you were to
look up at the sky

from the surface of this
newly discovered planet,

you would see two sunsets.

But in this case,
the planet is so hot,

you would also be vaporized.

- [Hakeem] This is a
remarkable discovery

because this is the first
time the test satellite

was able to discover a planet
orbiting a double star system,

and it was found by a
high school student.

- [Paul] The astronomers
leading the study published

their results in a major
international science journal,

and they do a very classy thing.

They include 17-year-old
high school intern Wolf

as a co-author.

- [Hakeem] But it's not
all good news for Wolf,

'cause even though he's the
guy who discovered the planet,

he's not allowed to name it.

NASA names it TOI-1338 b,

which doesn't exactly
roll off the tongue.

- Some reporters ask Wolf if
he's disappointed by the name,

and he says his
brother suggested

they call it Wolftopia,

which, let's face it,
is far more awesome.

- [Danny] High in the Andes,

two climbers reached the
summit of a frozen peak,

but instead of a
breathtaking view,

they discovered a clue
from an old mystery.

[tense music]

- It's a cool day
in January of 1998,

on the Chilean-Argentinian
border.

Mountain climbers Pablo
Reguera and Fernando Garmendia

are summiting one of the
highest peaks in the area,

Mount Tupungato.

As they cross the
15,000-foot mark,

they notice something
in the distance.

- As they get closer,
it becomes obvious

that what they're looking
at is some sort of engine,

and a quick wipe of
the valve cover on top

reveals the words "Rolls-Royce."

- Now, obviously, nobody has
taken their luxury automobile

three miles up a
mountain in Argentina,

so the two conclude that
what they must be looking at

is an airplane engine.

- [Kavitha] There are no
recent reports of crashes

or missing airplanes
anywhere in the area,

and while the engine
looks pretty banged up,

it's tough to tell just
how long it's been there.

- [Martin] A quick search of the
area reveals what appears to be

a damaged fuselage

as well as some strips
of sun-bleached clothing.

At this point, the
mountain climbers realize

that this is definitely
a crash site.

- [Danny] The question
is, from when?

[camera shutter clicks]

- [Martin] They
snap a few photos,

and they head back down
the mountain and report it.

- [Andrew] This is
enough to raise interest

in mounting a full expedition.

And so volunteers from
the Argentinian Army

form a caravan:

trucks, men, even mules,
to try to get to places

where the trucks can't
go on the mountain.

- [Kavitha] When the team
reaches the crash site,

they spread out and
comb over the area.

- [Danny] Then the search
takes a gruesome turn.

- They find human body parts
scattered across the crash site.

[dramatic music]

Parts of five different bodies
are ultimately discovered,

all preserved atop
this frozen mount.

- [Martin] The team then
turns over their findings

to Argentine scientists.

Over the next two years,
they conduct DNA testing

and eventually
confirm the identities

of all five individuals.

- As they notify the families,

they realize these victims
are all linked by one thing:

they were all on a plane that
vanished nearly 50 years ago.

[tense music]

- [Andrew] On August 2nd, 1947,

a decommissioned
World War II bomber,

now converted into a passenger
plane called the Stardust,

takes off from Buenos Aires
with 11 people on board,

bound for Santiago.

- [Martin] There's a
snowstorm that day

as well as a strong headwind.

Then, just four minutes

before the aircraft is
scheduled to land in Santiago,

the pilot sends a
Morse code message

announcing his estimated
time of arrival,

followed by a cryptic
message: "STENDEC."

- [Kavitha] The radio
man in Santiago

has never heard this phrase.

He asks for the
message to be repeated,

and it comes back the same
twice more: "STENDEC, STENDEC."

- [Danny] The signal
cuts off without warning,

and the plane simply disappears.

- [Martin] The Argentine
and Chilean air forces

send up aircraft searching
for wreckage of Stardust,

and yet they find nothing.

It's like it simply disappeared
off the face of the Earth.

- [Kavitha] For 50 years,
the fate of Stardust

remained an aviation cold case,

but now, there's a
chance to solve it all

because some mountain climbers
tripped over its engine.

- From what
investigators can tell,

the plane crashed into
the side of the mountain

during a controlled descent.

The visibility
would've been bad

and if the crew hadn't accounted
for the strong headwinds,

they may have thought
they were past the Andes

when they began their descent.

- [Martin] Under
whiteout conditions,

they may never have
even seen the mountain

before they collided with it.

And if the collision
was violent enough,

[airplane slams]

it may have triggered an
avalanche that buried Stardust,

obscuring it from the view of
the search and rescue aircraft

that were looking for it.

- [Danny] With the fate of
the people aboard figured out,

one question remains:
what does "STENDEC" mean?

- [Martin] Some think that
it might be some sort of

abbreviated distress message

like "Severe
turbulence encountered.

Now descending, expect crash."

But there's no proof of this.

And why tag a routine
arrival message

with this complicated acronym?

- We may never crack
the code of "STENDEC,"

but at least the families
of the passengers

and crew of the Stardust

now know the fate
of their loved ones.

And this 50-year-old
aviation cold case

is, at least partly, closed.

- [Danny] Sometimes,
mysteries about the heavens

aren't found above us,

but instead are buried
deep in the ground,

like one ancient object
discovered in Germany.

[tense music]

- In 1999, in a remote
part of Nebra, Germany,

metal detectorists Henry
Westphal and Mario Renner

are on the hunt for
coins and other trinkets

that they can pawn to
subsidize their hobby.

- As they swing their metal
detector over the ground,

[metal detector whining]

they hear that
high-pitched whine,

and that gets them
really excited,

'cause this is what
they're here for.

[shovels scraping]

- They start digging with small
shovels, and then pickaxes,

and as they dig, their signal
gets stronger and stronger.

[metal detector whining]

Soon, they uncover
something large and flat.

It's a bronze sword,

and it's old, possibly ancient.

- [Danny] They wave
the metal detector

over the now-empty hole,
and to their amazement,

[metal detector whining]

they still have a signal.

- [Micah] Finally, one of them
gets their hands wrapped around

a particularly stubborn piece.

Whatever this is,
it's wide and round

and much tougher to free.

They use the pickax to
jostle a little bit,

and finally, this strange
object emerges from the ground.

[intense music]

- [Hakeem] This piece
is kind of disc-shaped,

and it has the image of a
golden crescent moon and stars.

They don't know
what to make of it,

but they think that it's
got to be worth something.

- [Danny] To the finders,
it looks like treasure,

but in the eyes of the
law, it's contraband.

- [Hakeem] In Germany,

this kind of stuff is
considered state property.

You're not allowed to keep it,

and you're supposed to have a
license just to hunt for it.

- Let's just say Henry
and Mario haven't exactly

filled out the proper paperwork.

So they're in a pickle here.

They want to make some money,

but they don't want to get
caught, so they gotta move fast.

- [Micah] The next day, they
race to a dealer in Cologne

who gives them 31,000
Deutsche Marks.

That's equivalent to
about $17,000 today.

- [Danny] As the men disappear
to count their money,

their strange disc
creates a buzz

in the underground
collector world.

- [Hakeem] For years,
the disc passes

from collector to collector,

rising in value to over
1/2 a million bucks.

But still, nobody knows
exactly what it is.

- Experts date it to the
Bronze Age around 1,600 BCE,

but it's the markings that
actually fuel speculation.

- Some astronomers note that
a cluster of stars on the disc

seems to correspond to the
constellation Pleiades,

and on the side of the
disc, there is a long arc

with a very precise
measurement of 82.5 degrees.

This corresponds to the
difference between sunsets

at winter and summer solstice.

- [Hakeem] Soon,
experts start to think,

maybe this strange disc

is the oldest graphical
representation

of astronomical phenomena
ever discovered.

- [Danny] It's dubbed
the Nebra sky disc,

and German officials are eager
to get their hands on it.

- One seller, who's looking to
unload it for a cool million,

gets busted in a
sting operation,

and the government
is getting ready

to throw the book at them for
selling black market antiques.

- Looking for leniency,
they provide information

that leads authorities back

to Henry Westphal
and Mario Renner.

- [Hakeem] Henry and
Mario get arrested

on the grounds of treasure
hunting without a license

and stealing state property.

So now, it looks like
they're gonna have to spend

that 31,000 Deutsche Marks they
got to pay for some lawyers.

- [Danny] After a short trial,

Henry and Mario are sentenced
to four to ten months in jail.

- [Micah] As for the sky disc,

well, it's now kept
in a state museum

where people can visit
and continue to speculate

about whether it is
indeed the first depiction

of the cosmos.

- Cameras on the Moon,
wreckage in the sea,

and treasures pointing
towards the stars.

Some mysteries from the skies

go far beyond
anything we expect.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching
Mysteries Unearthed.