Because he was an artist, Edward explored finding a desired route to the Moon by doing a painting of the Earth-Moon system using bold brushstrokes in Van Gogh style, working very fast so he wouldn’t be thinking and being guided instead by his unconscious. Examining his finished work, the pattern of brushstrokes revealed the desired trajectory, which was then found using a computer simulation with realistic modeling and the final conclusion gave rise to a new way to get to the Moon with much less fuel. This route and accompanying methodology was a new approach to space travel; it promised to save substantial money to place a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon because no fuel was required. Originally, Edward’s application of the Chaos Theory was not accepted. He says, “These ideas were not well received since they were so new and not the way they (astrodynamicists) did trajectory design at the time. In January 1990 my boss told me that I was to be let go from my regular mission design job—mainly because the work I was doing in my spare time of ballistic capture transfers was not appreciated.”

Edward explained that his low-energy trajectory made the current three day trip to the moon a two year venture. He added that his discovery would require “smaller spacecraft that would be less expensive and require fewer people to be employed by the Center which, I was told, was not desirable.” 4 Edward’s theory was put to the test when Japanese lunar orbiter probe, Hagoromo, lost its transmitter and was unable to communicate with its command probe, Hiten, which was orbiting Earth. Using conventional trajectory transfers, the command probe was unable to enter lunar orbit to re-establish contact due to low levels of fuel. Edward devised a ballistic capture trajectory that required little fuel and saved the Japanese mission. The incident was published in an article entitled “Through the Fuzzy Boundary: A New Route to the Moon” in Carl Sagan’s Planetary Report (May/June 1992). What few realize, however, is that Edward believes his ideas may have come from another mind. He has agreed here to share some of his inspiring story. “The fact that I was being let go from my job was a terrible experience. I was shattered. I felt like my life was over. Later that day my comprehension.”

Two months later, in April 1990, Edward says an engineer named James Miller arrived at his door. Miller was asking for help with the compromised probe mission that Japan was desperate to salvage. Edward says: The moment he asked me, the solution suddenly jumped into my mind, like a light going off. It was a solution I had not considered in the previous five years. It was weird, using the Sun’s gravity, requiring Muses A ( Hiten ) to go one million miles beyond the Moon, then falling back to the Moon and into lunar orbit using my theory of ballistic capture, requiring no fuel. I had never thought of this before. But yet, I felt confident it would work. I had an inner knowing. The engineer did not believe the agency would go for it, but they did. The new method would take the probe five months to achieve orbit, substantially less than the two years of Edward Belbruno’s original theory.

In April 1992, the Hiten probe was taken out of Earth’s orbit to begin the five-month journey into Lunar orbit using little to no fuel. In the meantime, Edward decided to move from Pasadena to St. Paul, Minnesota, with his girlfriend, Elena. He says, “While Hiten was on its way to the Moon, we were driving to St. Paul, Minnesota in my Jeep Wrangler.” The couple stopped for a dinner break just north of Caspar, Wyoming, and the trip took a new direction. They argued over the route because, for some unknown reason, Elena was determined to take an easterly direction for about 70 miles on a small, one-lane road that ultimately led to Thunder Basin National Grasslands. Eventually Edward agreed, and around 7 p.m. they started on the new route. Edward reports that once on the road:

it was very unusual. It was slightly foggy and we saw a number of animals near the road, so I had to drive with some caution. The road was only one lane in each direction. After driving for a couple of hours, I noticed not a single car passed us in either direction. This was unusual. I was concerned that we could run out of gas. Then suddenly, I was relieved to see a sign saying we were entering Thunder Basin National Grasslands. I knew that the tiny town of Wright was not far away.

The road headed down a decline as we drove into the basin. Off in the distance, at the bottom of the basin, perhaps about two miles away, I saw a very bright red light. I couldn’t imagine what it was and said to Elena that it must be a construction site, not thinking how ridiculous that sounded since it was in a park about 11 p.m. at night. As we got to the bottom of the basin and the road leveled off, I kept my eyes on the red light. As we got closer, maybe a half mile away, I saw that the light was straight ahead. However, I noticed that it was not on the side of the road, but in the center of the road. This concerned me.

As I got closer, about one quarter mile away, I noticed something else that alarmed me. The light was not a point source, but the boundary of a square. This was very strange. I said to Elena that it must be an advertising sign on a tractor trailer that had jack-knifed across the road. My mind was racing to make sense of it. As I got closer, about 50 feet away, I abruptly stopped. The red square was huge and not on the road, but about 20 feet above the road. Its base was about 40 feet, the width of the entire road, and the height was also about 40 feet. I saw it was on the back of a much larger black square object that was on the road and extended well over the road on both sides and with a vertical height of about 60 feet. The red square was right in the center of it.

The road was totally blocked by this object. I could not get around it. It seemed clear that whatever it was, it intended to block the road. It wasn’t doing anything except sitting there, silently. Elena and I just stared at it. The light was bright, but you could look at it. Elena was scared and I was totally stunned. I had seen nothing remotely like this before. Being a scientist, I was completely at a loss for words.

It just sat there—then suddenly it lifted off of the road. It was silent. It was amazing to see. It stopped rising and the base of the black square hovered at about 50 feet off of the ground for about 20 minutes. I was totally in awe. Then suddenly, the black square with the red square boundary in the center of it, started to rotate. As it rotated, it became clear that we were looking at the back of a large rectangular craft about 100 feet long. It stopped rotating and the long rectangle, mainly black with a slight bluish glow, hovered off the road. It just stayed still. Elena said that I should walk under it. I said, “No way, it could be dangerous” and then said, “Why don’t you walk under it?” So, there we sat in the car watching this thing hover above the road. It was completely silent. There was  nothing threatening about it. It was almost as if it was doing this as a demonstration.

Suddenly it did a little oscillating motion, then slowly moved away silently, going north. It was very pleasant and beautiful. My mind was racing to try and make sense of this. When it was a couple of miles north with the red square barely visible in the back, I got out of my Jeep and stood in the road, watching the rectangle fly away. Then I got back into my car and just drove away on the road. I was in a daze.

As I drove away in shock, not noticing where I was going, I felt Elena shaking me strongly, saying, ‘They’re waiting for us!’ She was very frightened. I looked ahead and saw an intense white light oscillating in a rapid fashion, like a strobe light, on the left side of the road. I wanted to stop. However, it was frightening. When I slowed down, I saw a number of things and a lot of activity. This situation was very scary, with the bright strobe like light going on and off rapidly. When I went to stop, Elena started screaming very loudly and she started to panic, threatening to jump out of the car. I decided not to stop. We made it to a hotel about an hour later. It should have been 12 midnight or so, but it was 3 a.m.

In St. Paul, a month later, I happily found out that Hiten successfully arrived at the Moon on the new transfer. Carl Sagan asked me to write an article about the rescue of Hiten for his journal, The Planetary Report. As I was proof reading it, I ended by saying that Hiten arrived at the Moon on October 2, 1991.

I scratched my head then had the startling realization that when my car was blocked by the huge rectangular craft in Wyoming, that was precisely when Hiten arrived at the Moon!

After this realization, it was like I was hit by a lightning bolt. Was this a coincidence? If not, what did it mean? Was I being informed that Hiten had arrived? Why was this being done? Was my work on the transfer influenced? If so, by what?

Since then, my view of the world has changed. I had always thought that the human race was in control of its own destiny. My experience indicated that this was not the case. Our reality is far more complex than I ever imagined, and is not what it seems at all.”

The story of the rescue of Hiten and Edward’s theory is written up in the book Fly Me to the Moon (Princeton University Press, 2007). (His Websites are www.edbelbruno.com and www.belbrunoart.com.)