What do a rocket, NASA engineers, an African safari guide and an outhouse have in common?
February 28, 2006 — Well… almost. The mystery began in 1975 when Graham Sheppard was flying doctors to a remote landing strip in western Zambia. Sheppard, accompanied by his then 6-year-old son Ian, saw a piece of metal near an airstrip that caught his eye. According to the Sheppards, the out-of-place piece of metal had numbers, a NASA inscription and “U.S.A.” printed on it. Graham took a picture of the metal with a local man posing next to it when he returned to the site in 1976. Years later, Graham showed the picture to his younger son, Richard. This sparked Richard’s interest in recovering the metal and finding out its origins. Since Richard was an African safari guide in Zambia, he was able to search for the object. Following his first failed attempt due to poor road conditions in 1999, Richard resumed his search to locate the metal in 2000. He first went to the West Two Airstrip in Zambia, where his father thought he had seen the metal 24 years earlier. Just as he was concludin
