Hangar 18

Space. Three astronauts are preparing to launch a satellite from the shuttle . One of them is in outer space and conducts the latest preparatory operations. Suddenly, the co-pilot detects an object moving in zigzags on the radar, which ultimately hangs right above the shuttle. They see it, but do not have time to do anything - the satellite, which is to enter a higher orbit, turns on its engines on command from the Earth and crashes directly into a UFO . An astronaut who was in the cargo compartment dies, his body is carried away into the distance. A shuttle with two astronauts is landing on Earth.

A UFO also lands somewhere in a desert area in Arizona , near the federal highway on which the car was traveling. A local resident, unemployed, seeing the lights of a UFO falling at night, examines the place of his landing.

Special services are moving the UFO to the former Air Force facility, now handed over to NASA - Hangar 18. After-flight service of the shuttles was supposed here, and the hangar was crammed with scientific equipment. Advisor to the president with the heads of special services and the Air Force are holding a meeting. They decide that information about UFOs can greatly interfere with the current president in the re-election, which will take place in two weeks. At this time, it is proposed to remain silent about the UFO, clean up all the records of radars and cameras, and blame the two astronauts for the death of the third.

Astronauts undertake their own investigation. With the help of a friend, they get to the tracking station, which also tracked the path of the UFO. A friend shows on the map the landing site of the ship. They are going there.

The local resident who saw the UFO, along with the sheriff arrives at the landing site, but finds nothing. He tells everyone what he saw, but no one believes him. Astronauts meet with the sheriff, because they do not find an eyewitness to the landing, and come to the landing site of the UFO. There they find a round platform consisting entirely of melted stones and neatly hidden under the branches. They pick up one melted stone and immediately encounter special services. During the chase, a special services vehicle falls from the bridge and explodes.

A UFO study group is located in Hangar 18. Everyone is warned that until further notice they will not have contact with the outside world. Researchers enter an alien ship and discover the bodies of two aliens. The bodies are taken to the laboratory. Their structure is almost identical to human, but nevertheless there are subtle differences. The cause of their death was the destruction of test tubes with simple substances during the explosion of an earth satellite, these substances, mixed together, formed a poisonous gas. In UFOs, they also find samples of earthly life - animals immersed in some kind of liquid, and even a girl who turned out to be alive (later, for some reason, she is not mentioned anywhere in the film). The symbols drawn on the buttons in the UFO coincide with the symbols found during excavations in the ancient pyramids in Mexico and Egypt. The decrypted documents indicate that the aliens visited the Earth in ancient times and used the ancient ancestors of man as slaves, and also mated with them, changing evolution, and now they are going to return. This UFO is a scout plotting landing zones, and somewhere in space there is a base ship.

Astronauts suggest that special services could hide UFOs on the basis of after-flight shuttle service, that is, in Hangar 18, since nowhere else are there so many research instruments. They go there, but in the rented car, it is obviously no coincidence that the brakes fail, and when they do stop, intelligence agents shoot them. Astronauts hijack a fuel truck, during the next chase they pour gasoline to the ground and set it on fire. The special services car burns down, but one of the astronauts dies. The NASA Executive Director is extremely dissatisfied with the development of the situation and threatens to publish the facts. The head of the special services with the approval of the adviser to the president and the Air Force general decides to destroy the alien ship. An unmanned jet aircraft stuffed with explosives flies from the CIA air base and heads for Hangar 18.

The astronaut in the next stolen car breaks through the guards, sneaks into Hangar 18 and meets with NASA's Executive Director. Together they enter the alien ship. At this time, a plane falls from the sky onto the hangar, causing a huge explosion. But the explosion does not damage the alien ship and everyone who was inside, and in the morning a large press conference dedicated to UFOs is scheduled.

• Gary Collins - Steve Bancraft, NASA Astronaut
• James Hampton - Lew Price, NASA Astronaut
• J. R. Clark - Judd Gates, Astronaut, Air Force Colonel
• Robert Vaughn - Gordon Kane, Advisor to the President
• Philip Abbott - Frank Morrison, Lieutenant General
• Joseph Campanella - Frank Rafferty, Head of Special Services
• Darren McGavin - Harry Forbes, NASA Executive Director, First Entered UFO
• Tom Hallick - Phil Cameron, Principal Investigator
• Stephen Keats - Paul Bannister, UFO Researcher
• Pamela Bellwood - Sarah Michaels, UFO researcher who performed an autopsy on aliens
• Andrew Bloch - Neil Keyso, UFO Researcher, Linguist
• Michael Ruud - George Turner, friend from a tracking station
• Stuart Pankin - Sam Tate, a local who saw a UFO
• Cliff Osmond - Sheriff Barlow
• William Schallert - Professor Mills, Specialist in Smelted Stone
• Betty Ann Carr - Flo Mattson, Representative, Civil Information Office
• H. M. Wineant - Flight Director
• Bill Sackert - Ace London
• Jess Bennett - intelligence agent
• Robert Bristol - Helicopter Pilot
• Ed. I. Carroll - intelligence agent
• Craig Clyde - Captain Wyatt
• John William Galt - NASA Spokesperson
• Ann Calwan - Technical Specialist
• Ken Hepner - pilot
• Michael Irving - intelligence agent
• Bruce Katzman - intelligence agent
• Peter Lyakakis - Bartender
• Debra McFarlane - Specialist Woman
• Chet Norris - Air Force Captain
• Head Redford - Civil Officer
• Max Robinson - Arms Officer
• Axis Robinson - Air Force Guard
• Scott Wilkinson - Flight Operations Officer

• In the year the film was released, the Space Shuttle had not yet flown into space (the first flight was carried out on April 12, 1981 ). The film used several real shots with the landing of the shuttle prototype - the Enterprise shuttle.
• The shuttle in reality never flew with three astronauts. The crews consisted first of two, and later - of 4-8 people.
• The film was shown in Soviet film distribution, and later was released on the first channel of central television in December 1983. Before the film was shown, the introductory speech was made by the astronaut A. Leonov . The episodes were cut out of the film: the conclusions of the NASA commission on the origin of the aliens from the "plate" (about 2 minutes), the plot of a kidnapped and surviving woman from Earth (about 3 minutes). In addition, the time of several more episodes was slightly reduced. These edits did not have any political tinge: they were made to "fit" the duration of the picture into "standard" rolling "no more than 90 minutes", which at that time was a frequent occurrence. Nevertheless, a couple of dialogues were voiced with editing “for political reasons” - for example, at the very beginning of the original film in the cockpit, pilots joked about “Russian missiles” (according to another version about “Russian toilets”), and at the Soviet box office the phrase was replaced with a neutral joke (“So that we had something to do”).
• In 1978, a film with a similar plot “Capricorn One” was shot and also widely shown at the Soviet film distribution: astronauts take part in the staging of a flight to Mars , but under pain of exposing the special services try to kill the astronauts.
• Based on the film, the songs of the American thrash metal band Megadeth Hangar 18 and Return to Hangar were recorded.

• Space shuttle
• UFO
• Capricorn-1