Space Council Contingency Plan For Alien Contact, July 1963

Brief

Produced within the Executive Office of the President by the National Aeronautics and Space Council and dated July 18, 1963, this memorandum engages directly with what the description calls 'the space alien race question.' It outlines thinking on plans to be activated if alien intelligence is discovered, frames such discovery in terms of expanding scientific knowledge, and raises Mars as a candidate site for extraterrestrial life. The document also addresses diplomatic policy, suggesting that by mid-1963 at least some corner of the federal executive was treating first-contact contingency planning as a matter requiring coordinated foreign-policy consideration.

Metadata

Agency

Department of State

Release

5/8/26

Incident

7/18/63

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

6 pages

Tags

extraterrestrial intelligence, Mars, alien contact contingency, diplomatic policy, 1963, Space Council

Key points

• The memo was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Council within the Executive Office of the President, giving it direct White House adjacency rather than an agency-level origin.
• It addresses contingency plans to be activated upon discovery of alien intelligence — framing the question as one that required pre-planning rather than ad hoc response.
• Expanding scientific knowledge is listed as a distinct topic, suggesting the memo treats alien contact partly as a research-policy question alongside its strategic dimensions.
• The possibility of life on Mars is identified as a specific sub-topic, placing this document in the early-1960s scientific debate about Martian biology that preceded Mariner 4.
• Diplomatic policy is explicitly included, indicating that the document's authors envisioned alien contact as an event with international-relations consequences requiring prepared governmental posture.

Most interesting

• The memo predates NASA's Mariner 4 flyby of Mars by two years, meaning its authors were operating without any direct imaging data of the Martian surface when they assessed the possibility of life there.
• That the Space Council — a body chaired by the Vice President and composed of cabinet-level officials — produced this memo suggests the 'alien race question' reached advisory levels immediately below the President in 1963.
• The inclusion of 'diplomatic policy' as a discrete topic implies the authors assumed alien contact would require negotiation or at minimum a defined governmental posture toward a non-human party, a framing that goes beyond mere scientific curiosity.
• The document's State Department release classification ties it to foreign-policy records channels, consistent with its diplomatic-policy content despite its EOP origin.