Zuma

Given the codename “Zuma,” Mission 1390 was a collaboration between the U.S. government and two private companies, multinational aerospace and defense firm Northrop Grumman and spacecraft manufacturer and launch service provider SpaceX. However, it was unknown what the purpose of Zuma was, with specific details - such as the government agency in charge of the project - remaining classified.

IMAGE was the first spacecraft dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. Developed by NASA, IMAGE was part of their Medium Explorer mission, which hoped to study the global response of Earth's magnetosphere to changes in solar winds by taking photographs of the magnetosphere every two minutes with special cameras that were able to observe things imperceptible to the human eye. This was a pretty genius idea developed by the bright minds at NASA in the 1990s, leading to IMAGE's launch on March 25th, 2000.

Over the next half-decade, IMAGE would go on to become a smashing success for NASA, benefiting not just them but all of the various agencies and organizations interested in this type of research. The findings from IMAGE contributed to over 400 research articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and helped confirm things that scientists had long since theorized, but been unable to prove. It even upended how some of the brightest among us viewed certain aspects of our planet... things that honestly go right over my head, but seem incredibly impressive.

Despite being launched as just a two-year mission, IMAGE continued operations through 2005 and its mission was extended throughout 2010, inspiring hope that there was much more the spacecraft could help teach us about the world we live on: our small-but-beautiful pebble within the grand scale of the cosmos.

But in December 2005, during a routine pass, IMAGE's telemetry signals were not received. An analysis indicated that the nearly-six-year-old satellite may have encountered some issues with its solid state power controller, resulting in the power unit still working but not properly providing power to its transponder... thus, resulting in it being unable to continue making contact. At the time, NASA analysts hoped that the mega-eclipse cycle in October 2007 would help drain the battery and close the power line, causing the system to reboot itself, but that day came and went with no such luck.

For the next decade, those that had been working on or benefited from IMAGE began to write it off as a dead project, perhaps merely counting their blessings that they were able to squeeze nearly six years of research out of a project that was originally slated to last just two. But even that was bittersweet, knowing that all IMAGE had accomplished was only a fraction of what it was capable of.

But in January 2018, an amateur satellite tracker began to receive images that he believed belonged to IMAGE. The presumably long-lost satellite, which had been drifting quietly in space, totally unbothered for more than twelve years, was still functional. And it appeared like it was continuing to try and send signals back to Earth, but the disruptions in its power settings had resulted in it simply being unable to. Those that had worked on the original project expressed excitement at the possibility of IMAGE's continued existence, and NASA would eventually confirm that IMAGE had been re-discovered by, of all people, an amateur satellite tracker named Scott Tilley. Believing that he'd discovered something worthwhile by accident, Tilley had followed up on his hunch, and ended up being completely correct in his original assumption.

IMAGE had been re-discovered and was continuing to transmit data back to Earth, but the sad news is that NASA had sadly moved on from it after all that time. Their systems no longer communicated neatly with IMAGE's outdated software and hardware, and because IMAGE had been lost for more than a decade, they'd moved on from the older equipment. So they needed to try and make their current systems backwards-compatible. Meanwhile, the signal continued to prove elusive. NASA and other amateur satellite trackers were able to track IMAGE through late February 2018, only to lose its signal once again. They regained the signal about a week later, on March 4th, but then lost it for good again later that year, in August.

At the time, it was believed that NASA could restart IMAGE's mission if they chose to continue recovery efforts, but six years later, it doesn't seem like there's been much momentum in that regard. But the rediscovery of IMAGE after all those years away gave hope that the data it had been presumably collecting could still be recovered, and may provide researchers and analysts with continued knowledge of the Earth itself.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering how this story relates to today's episode. Well, I only bring this story up because IMAGE's rediscovery in 2018 was preempted by another story. You see, at the time, satellite trackers around the world were in the process of looking for another spacecraft, another that had been launched more than a decade later for entirely different purposes.

This was a government-funded project overseen by Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense contractor, and hadn't been launched by NASA, but rather, by SpaceX. And it carried a mysterious payload known only to those with the proper security clearance. Like its payload, the launch itself had been surrounded by an air of mystery, and many of the questions asked back in 2018 remain unanswered to this day.

This is the story of Zuma.

Given the code-name "Zuma," Mission 1390 was a collaboration between the U.S. government and two private companies: multinational aerospace and defense firm Northrop Grumman and spacecraft manufacturer and launch service provider SpaceX.

Zuma was the most secretive space mission developed by the United States in some time, with the project's existence not even being publicly known until September 2017, when SpaceX filed applications with the Federal Communications Commission, requesting special temporary authority to transmit signals at 2.2 GHz during the mission's launch, which was just weeks away, in November. This came as a bit of a surprise because SpaceX typically planned out their flights well ahead of time, so them coming forward a little more than a month before this launch indicated a level of immediacy that the private space company hadn't really shown up to this point.

However, even after this filing, the specific details about what Zuma was would remain closely-guarded by the entities involved and their public-facing representives. However, it was widely-believed that Zuma was a satellite of some kind, perhaps an Eagle-3 Satellite Platform from Northrop Grumman, but even that was just floated as a potential possibility by reporters. And even then, it was unknown what the purpose of the satellite was or would be, with specific details being described as highly-classified.

Whatever Zuma was had originally come into theoretical existence back in 2015, when Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems had signed a contract with SpaceX, agreeing to launch a craft with an unnamed payload for an unspecific U.S. government agency. More than two years later, it seems like this project had finally come to fruition, with SpaceX announcing that it was seeking the time frame of November 2017 to April 2018 to launch the mysterious payload into space with a Falcon 9 rocket. The craft was scheduled to enter Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and there, the payload would separate from the Falcon 9 rocket, which would return to Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone in Florida. The payload would remain in orbit around the earth in LEO, roughly 1000 kilometers above the Earth's surface.

This would be the third secretive launch by SpaceX that year, following the launch of a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office in May, as well as the launch of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane in September. However, even then, this launch was more secretive. No U.S. agency would come forward and claim ownership of the payload; even the NRO, who'd launched a classified payload earlier that year, denied having any involvement. And when asked, Lon Rains, communications director for Northrop Grumman's space division, gave little detail:

"The Zuma payload is a restricted payload. The event represents a cost-effective approach to space access for government missions. As a company, Northrop Grumman realizes that this is a monumental responsibility and has taken great care to ensure the most affordable and lowest risk scenario for Zuma."

Because of its level of secrecy, Zuma immediately drew parallels to the launch of the PAN and CLIO satellites in 2009 and 2014, respectively, which had been developed by Lockheed Martin and were believed to have been projects overseen by the NSA and CIA. At least, documents indicated as such were provided by Edward Snowden, who claimed that the two satellites had been sent up to collect information for the U.S. government's three-letter agencies. It was unknown if that was the purpose for this secretive and rather-surprising launch, which was announced just weeks before its launch.

Rumors swirled about what Zuma was, with comments on Twitter and Reddit indicating that it was the most valuable satellite launched by SpaceX to date, and that the infamous founder of the company was personally involved in the planning of it. Later estimates would put the cost of the project at around $3.5 billion, all of which was provided by government funding.

As I mentioned, Northrop Grumman would only describe Zuma as a "restricted payload," and the level of secrecy around Zuma would remain incredibly high, to the point that the U.S. agency in charge of the Zuma project was not even known. That information remained hidden underneath the top secret classification, categorized at the highest levels of security restrictions for craft launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

However, through the scant amount of information released by SpaceX ahead of the launch, we were able to learn a little bit about the payload and the process it would take to enter Low Earth Orbit, which extends from about 100 miles to about 1,240 miles above the Earth (roughly 160 to 2,000 kilometers). This is the height used for some satellites and spacecraft, including weather satellites and the International Space Station. However, the specific angle for this orbit would be somewhere between 50 and 51 degrees, which was extremely unusual. In fact, the only satellite to share a similar orbit had been launch just months prior: USA-276, which was launched by the National Reconnassaince Office, and was widely believed to be a spy satellite.

Due to warnings sent out to pilots ahead of the expected launch date, it was believed that the rocket would fly out northeast from Florida. This mysterious payload - whatever Zuma was - would be strapped to the top of a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket with a payload adapter, and once in orbit, the adapter would release it from the rocket. After separation, the Falcon-9 would return to Cape Canaveral's Landing Station in Florida. The debris from the second stage of the rocket (the time of separation) would likely re-enter Earth's orbit over the southern Indian Ocean, falling into the water southeast of Madagascar.

Originally set to launch on November 15th, 2017, Zuma was delayed 24 hours. A SpaceX spokesperson told Space.com:

"Both Falcon 9 and the payload remain healthy. Teams will use the extra day to conduct some additional mission assurance work in advance of launch."

However, the launch was delayed again, all the way until January of 2018, when payload-fairing tests performed at another planned launch necessitated the quick study of data to ensure the launch wouldn't be compromised. It's believed that the payload adapter, which connected Zuma to the Falcon-9 rocket, wasn't properly prepared to disconnect the payload from the rocket itself. Other than getting up into space, this was the most important part of the entire process, so it makes sense that continued trouble delayed the launch. It was believed that the unique design of Zuma rendered it potentially susceptible to jolt-induced damage, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Eventually, though, a firm launch date was established weeks later: Sunday, January 7th, 2018.

At 8:00 PM on January 7th, 2018, the mission known only as Zuma was a go.

Seventy minutes beforehand, the rocket's computers were switched on, its launch readiness was verified, and a countdown started. At that point, the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket was then loaded with super-chilled densified rocket-grade RP-1 kerosene, followed at the forty-five minute mark with cryogenic liquid oxygen. At the ten-minute mark, the main engines on the rocket were readied for ignition, and the rocket then switched over to internal power.

At t-minus three seconds, the on-board computer sent a command to launch, and the nine Merlin 1-D engines then throttled up to full power, launching the Falcon 9 - and its mysterious payload - off of the launchpad with roughly 1.7 million pounds of thrust.

Approximately two minutes and nineteen seconds later, the booster's two stages separated. Afterward, the Falcon 9 rocket began maneuvering its way back to the Earth's surface, eventually touching down at its predetermined landing zone in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Meanwhile the second stage of the craft, the mysterious payload known only as Zuma, presumably continued its projected path into Low Earth Orbit.

By all indications, the launch had been a success. Early reporting indicated that everything had gone well... but then skeptics began to chime in, adding to a growing chorus of rumors.

Usually, SpaceX and the other companies involved would confirm that the launch had gone well, through some type of celebratory press release or such. But there was very little like that in this case. And at the same time, due to the classified nature of the launch, it wasn't strange that the entities involved would remain pretty tight-lipped about it.

But throughout January 8th, the day after the launch, rumors began circulating that Zuma - whatever it was - had died in orbit. These rumors actually prompted a response from Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX:

"For clarity: after a review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night. If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately. Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false. Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible."

The Pentagon and Northrop Grumman would both decline to provide details about the mission, citing the classified nature of the launch and its payload. But their silence would only fuel speculation about what had happened to Zuma.

Within days, it became clear that something had happened to Zuma. News agencies reported that the mysterious payload had failed to separate from the Falcon 9 rocket it'd been attached to during the second stage of the flight, after it'd reached Low Earth Orbit. Afterwards, the rocket had returned to its destination in Cape Canaveral, while the payload adapter, which held the mysterious Zuma, had then plummeted back down to Earth with its cargo attached, reportedly crashing in the Indian Ocean.

However, reports of the failure were quite scattered, simply because the classified nature of Zuma made it hard to determine what was true and what wasn't. There were no official statements indicating whether the mission had been successfully launched or not, with the SpaceX confirmation about the rocket doing its job being about as good as we'd get.

Peter Horstink, a Dutch pilot, was flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg at the time, and took a picture of a bright blue/green spiral in the skies above Sudan, which many believed was the second stage of the rocket beginning its de-orbit burn. At the time, as noted by Skeptoid host Brian Dunning, this would have put the altitude of Zuma somewhere between 900 and 1000 kilometers, which was at about the elevation that spy satellite USA-276 had gone to months beforehand. But the spiral shape photographed by this pilot indicates that the rocket or craft was venting fuel, something that's usually done in order to prevent whatever it was from dropping back down to Earth as essentially a missile.

This photograph gave credence to the notion that the payload adapter, which connected Zuma to the Falcon 9 rocket, had failed, resulting in the cargo not detaching from the rocket while in Low Earth Orbit and ultimately plummeting back down to Earth, where it was destroyed in a crash. This was the belief reported by several experts that analyzed the case for media outlets, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that:

"The device, purchased from a subcontractor, was significantly modified and then successfully tested three times on the ground by Northrop Grumman, according to one person familiar with the process. But upon reaching orbit, this person said, the adapter didn't uncouple the satellite from the rocket in zero-gravity conditions."

Months later, the Wall Street Journal would confirm their theories through "a person familiar with the process," claiming that Zuma had failed to detach from the Falcon 9 rocket due to a failure of the payload adapter. They reported that Zuma eventually broke free of the adapter, but, per the Journal:

"... dropped to an altitude that was too low for a rescue."

Despite this reported failure being directly linked to Northrop Grumman and the payload adapter they'd subcontracted out to another firm, this mission was one of a few recent launch failures overseen by SpaceX. This ultimately led to a Congressional briefing a little over a week after Zuma's botched launch, on January 17th, 2018. During which, Texas Representative Brian Babin would ask Dr. Hans Koenigsmann and William Gerstanmaier of SpaceX about not just their recent rocket failures, but the Zuma mission in particular.

Despite the apparent failure of Zuma (aka Mission 1390) being widely-reported by numerous outlets, there are those who believe that it didn't just fall back down to Earth. In fact, some have theorized that whatever Zuma was - whether it was a spy satellite of some kind, or a unique form of Low Earth Orbit radar - had in fact been successfully placed into orbit.

After all, the mysterious payload had made it up into Low Earth Orbit, and the U.S. government and Northrop Grumman had refused to comment on much at all. The only entity that did comment, SpaceX, made mention that the Falcon 9 rocket launch they'd overseen had been successful, but that they weren't able to directly comment on the payload itself. SpaceX would only focus on its own part in this mission, which they claimed had been successful. It's also worth noting that Zuma had been officially assigned a designation by the U.S. Air Force, USA-280, a step reserved for successful satellite launches. But even then, Zuma would have made a complete orbit around the planet by the time the second stage departure took place, which is when the failure to separate would have occurred. However, this designation only gave ammunition to the skeptics who believed that Zuma was still in orbit around the planet.

Because of the classified nature of Zuma, no one involved with it has ever gone on the record to clarify whether it'd been destroyed or been successful. Because of this shadowy realm of uncertainty, some theorized that it could actually benefit the project, giving it a shadowy cover to pretend that the project had failed when in actuality, it had succeeded. And believe it or not, but there was some precedent for that very thing.

In March 1990, the satellite known as MISTY-1 was launched from the space shuttle Atlantis, and supposedly exploded just days after launch. This was in the midst of the Cold War, and it was first reported by press outlets in the Soviet Union that space debris indicated MISTY had malfunctioned after launch. When questioned, a statement released by the Pentagon claimed:

"Hardware elements are expected to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. We believe there is no risk to life or property."

At the time, the Department of Defense continued to perpetuate the notion that the launch of MISTY-1 had been a failure, suffering a "disabling malfunction" and broke apart in orbit. In reality, though, the craft was perfectly fine. The launch had been carefully coordinated to fool the Soviet Union's less-than-capable radar and camera equipment, and it succeeded in doing just that. Pieces of fake space debris had been launched to distract any onlookers, while MISTY-1 continued on with its orbit at a higher altitude than original reports had indicated.

For more than five years afterward, the MISTY project carried on, and was even spotted in the sky by civilian space observers, who made note of the craft but were unsure of what it was. It was eventually identified, but even then, back in the early 1990s, highlighted how hard it was for nations to try and track foreign satellites. And that's before additional research was done into how to properly camouflage satellites, using things like suppression shields and mirrors that can deflect sunlight away from them... making them nearly-invisible to not just radar, but to the naked eye.

Because of the cost and mysterious nature of Zuma, it was theorized by some that it had a similar backstory as MISTY, having been launched with little notice and kept highly-classified in order to keep it secrets safely guarded. Afterward, a similar story had been cooked up to cover up the success of the launch, with Zuma - whatever it was - continuing to orbit the planet. After all, Zuma had been financed through a governmental process that required very little actual oversight, and if people suspected it had failed before being launched, they were less likely to ask questions about it later. In fact, if you look up anything about Zuma, you'll notice that most of the stories about it were published within weeks of its reported failure. Relatively little has been said about it since then. So if concocting a botched mission had been the intent, it successfully led to attention on the story quickly fading.

Regardless of whether or not Zuma had succeeded, many questions about it pertained to its original intent. Was it a spy satellite of some kind overseen by a U.S. intelligence organization? Was it an experimental craft of some make? Or was it something else entirely?

At the time of the launch, Northrop Grumman's Eagle-3 satellite platform was the only space craft it publicly offered that could get launched into space with a Falcon 9 rocket. Its onboard power supply could keep it operational for roughly seven years. However because of the immense budget that went into Zuma, it was believed that whatever it was had been retrofitted to fit a specific need. This was, after all, a project given an estimated budget of $3.5 billion. And because of its fragility - which we only know about because of the launch delays due to the payload adapter issues - we can reasonably surmise that it had very sensitive equipment onboard (cameras, radar equipment, etc.) that required careful handling during the launch.

However, it's also possible that this was a different type of experimental craft, which Northrop Grumman wouldn't have publicly advertised on their website. Perhaps it was a prototype of some design, something that had been in development for some time.

In the forms that it had originally filed with the FCC, SpaceX described the "nature of service" for the mysterious payload it was launching into space as "experimental," indicating that this may have been a technology demonstration of some kind. Perhaps this was a test to see if the technology was feasible at a certain elevation, or if there would be any issues in trying to get it into orbit... which, based on what the public was told, actually happened.

Because of the concerns at the time of Russian and Chinese satellites being able to potentially approach and/or disable American satellites or spacecraft, it was theorized by some that Zuma may have been a satellite put up to track these threats in higher geosynchronous orbits.

Others speculated that Zuma may have been a "inspector satellite," which was a term used to describe the concept of maneuverable space vehicles that could approach satellites for either passive or active purposes. Theoretically, these "inspector satellites" could help repair satellites that were facing issues; but could also conceivably be used to damage or disrupt other satellites, perhaps even listen in on signals being transmitted. Some had theorized that this was the purpose behind Boeing's X-37 project, as well as Russia's Kosmos 2499 rocket mission in 2014, as well as their testing of Nudol anti-ballistic missiles, meant to disable or destroy satellites in orbit. More recently, in May of 2024, it was reported that Russia has potentially launched an anti-satellite weapon into Low Earth Orbit, sharing an orbit with a U.S. government satellite.

Was Zuma the American government trying to preempt such a threat?

In an article by The War Zone, published in January 2017, a year before Zuma's launch, Tyler Rogoway speculated about Russia's testing of anti-satellite weapons:

"The Pentagon is facing threats in emerging mediums of combat. Cyber warfare may be grabbing all the headlines lately, but space - the place where so much of America's unique combat capability is enabled from - is the US military's glaring achilles heel. China and Russia are rapidly developing new capabilites to destroy, disable, blind or even hijack American satellites in orbit in an attempt to level the playing field should a peer-state conflict breakout. The US is slowly trying to adapt to this new reality by spinning up new ways to navigate and target in GPS-denied combat environments - as well as coming up with new communications techniques that work around reliance on satellite relays.

"For years, anything but kinetic anti-satellite weaponry remained on the dark fringes of the defense world. Now these concepts and capabilities are emerging into the mainstream. These range from the mysterious X-37B miniature space shuttle, to DARPA led initiatives aimed at servicing other satellites in space or using space junk to create cheap communications satellites. Any of these could be used to monitor, jam, or even destroy enemy satellites without creating terrible debris fields that will limit future access to space. Other highly classified space technologies also likely exist."

Many find it likely that, regardless of its status, Zuma was intended to be a sophisticated satellite built for clandestine purposes, operated by some unknown government agency. Likely, it had been designed for intelligence-gathering purposes, but it also may have been designed for some other unknown purpose we can only guess at. Some theorize that the reported failure may have just been a cover story meant to obfuscate the launch and hide Zuma's existence, and that it was intentionally built to be hidden: not only with technology that would minimize the chance of it being seen on radar, but with camouflage that would help hide it from the naked eye. And before you think that's too crazy, just remember that things in space are incredibly hard to see as it is. If you add some mirrors to reflect sunlight, and make a few custom changes (perhaps a few spearheaded by the $3.5 billion budget Zuma received), you could probably design something that would give ground-based optical observers a hard time.

Once up in space, Zuma also could have been equipped with technology that would make its path unpredictable; perhaps some predestined flight paths, and equipment that could help change its orbit in slight ways over time. That in itself would make Zuma hard to track, increasing the chances that it'd remain hidden hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface.

Some space enthusiasts, eager to learn more about Zuma, began digging around some old internet forums and even through government documents. Eventually they came across a 2007 report from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, which had come up with several "Alternatives for Military Space Radar." This report was filed eight years before the project known as Zuma was contracted out to Northrop Grumman, and more than a decade before it was launched. As noted by a May 2018 episode of the Skeptoid podcast, this report detailed:

"... potential satellite constellations that would provide synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observation combined with ground moving target indication (GMTI). Basically, these satellite systems would provide real-time, theater-wide battlefield data, including continuous coverage of selected targets. The kicker? All four options would require the satellites to be in 1,000-km high circular orbits, at an inclination of 53 (degrees) - nearly exactly where Zuma was headed."

This information stands out pretty significantly when you consider that in 2021, the newly-formed U.S. Space Force unveiled a plan to launch radar-equipped satellites that could track moving vehicles on the ground. They planned to collaborate with commercial companies to build and launch the satellites, and Colonel Catie Hague, spokeswoman for the Space Force, stated:

"Space-based GMTI will provide another way to harness data from the space domain and incorporate it into the secure cloud environment, underpinning the Advanced Battle Management System to sense, make sense, and act faster than our adversaries."

So knowing all of this, it just makes me think about the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. At the time, the U.S. was providing information to the world about Russia's build-up of forces along the Ukrainian border, and most journalists and pundits believed that this wasn't accurate - that it didn't match up with what they were seeing. At the end of the day, though, U.S. intelligence was correct. Was it possible that technology such as this had provided a detailed look at the buildup of forces across the border? Wouldn't it make sense that a sophisticated piece of technology such as this was responsible?

If so, was it possible that Zuma was a test run for these exact type of satellites? Which the Space Force was now preparing to invest quite heavily in?

Hopefully, one day we can learn much more about Zuma's original purpose.

Based on everything we know, the mysterious project known as Zuma never succeeded. While it did originally make it into Low Earth Orbit, based on the reporting from the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, it failed to separate from its payload adapter and ultimately plummeted back down to Earth. However, in the years since this reported failure, many have theorized otherwise, claiming that it did make it into orbit and was currently operational.

If Zuma had actually succeeded, then there is little we can to do verify it. As you heard in the episode introduction, where I detailed the story of IMAGE, finding things in Earth's orbit is hard. Really hard. It took space enthusiasts more than a decade to find IMAGE, which was a well-known and successful satellite. Can you imagine how exponentially harder it would be if you were trying to find something designed to be hidden? Something that couldn't be tracked through radar, let alone with the naked eye?

With space becoming the next frontier for this growing information-based cold war, the technology designed to wage this war is being developed at an exponential pace, with countries like the U.S., China, Russia, India, and others investing billions into space-related projects. Now, with private companies entering the mix, we're entering an era of the space age that is truly unprecedented, and Zuma is neither the first nor the last of its kind. We're going to see many more secretive collaborations between nations and private capital, and we can only hope that some of them are altruistic in nature. More likely than not, though, they won't be.

While Zuma is widely believed to have been a failure, the mere possibility of it succeeding indicates that the age of untrackable stealth spacecraft may already be here. This may no longer be the type of thing relegated to science fiction, but rather, is now a part of the reality we all share.

We can only guess at what the intended purpose of Zuma was - or is - but as of this episode's recording, its story remains unresolved.

Episode Information

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on July 29, 2024

Music Credits

Original music created by Micheal Whelan

Outro/theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves

Sources and Other Reading/Viewing

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