NASA's Missing 'Fragology Files': A 1996 Letter on Vanished

NASA's Missing 'Fragology Files': A 1996 Letter on Vanished Records

In a March 28, 1996 letter, the Washington National Records Center told NASA Headquarters it could not locate two boxes of records identified as 'Fragology Files' from accession 255-68A-2062, noting they were identified as missing in 1987.

Published

October 11, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

nasafoiamissingfragology1996lettervanished

NASA's Fragology Files Vanished From Records Center

The paper trail Center could not locate two boxes of records identified as "Fragology Files," drawn from NASA accession 255-68A-. The letter does not describe what the boxes held, how many individual documents they contained, or who last handled them. It states only that the Center's own records show the boxes were identified as missing in 1987 and have not been located since that date.

Crance's language is careful and final: given the length of time the records have been missing and the fact that an extensive search had been conducted, it was unlikely the boxes would ever be found. The letter closes with an apology for any inconvenience to NASA. That is the entire documented event.

A federal records center, asked by the agency that transferred the material, confirms that a discrete unit of NASA records has been unaccounted for across roughly nine years. The accession number itself, 255-68A-,…

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Based on the official release at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/nasas-fragology-files-space-object-recovery-and-analysis-records/

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