Are we alone in the universe? It has to be one of the most persistent and important questions out
there. And, in our quest to find the truth, many claim to have seen UFOs… but most of those claims
are also easy to dismiss as something quite ordinary, rather than alien. But what about
trained astronauts? What happens when the people that should know the most about space
claim to see something not of this world? This is Unveiled and today we’re exploring
four of the most extraordinary, alleged UFOs seen by astronauts.
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In today’s world, UFO sightings aren’t exactly rare. Although they’ve fluctuated over time,
they’ve generally grown more and more frequent in modern society. The problem is well-known, though,
that so many of these reports can’t be considered reliable. For instance,
it’s said that people who want to see a UFO are more likely to mistake something that’s actually
explainable for one. And, as many of us don’t have an extensive knowledge of aircraft (or of what can
and can’t be in the sky) there’s ample room for errors to be made… with common things like
airplanes and even planets often being mistaken by passers-by for otherworldly objects.
However, as we found out following the release of a much anticipated UFO Report by the US government
in June 2021, there have been at least 144 sightings of UFOs filed by U.S. military personnel
since 2004… and so far 143 of those are officially unexplained. The UFO story is about more than just
urban legends and hearsay, then. And there are notable instances from within the US Navy and Air
Force, especially. Potentially the most reliable source that a UFO sighting could ever come from,
though, is an astronaut. These talented few have extensive technological knowledge,
advanced scientific degrees, and they’ve spent hundreds of hours piloting aircrafts - including
literal spaceships. There’s not much that they don’t know about the skies above…
and yet some of them have claimed to have seen things even they can’t explain.
Vladimir Kovalyonok is a retired Soviet Cosmonaut, a key figure in multiple space missions,
and a one-time director of the Central Scientific Research Institute in Russia.
In May of 1981 he was onboard the Salyut 6, an early space station. During his mission, however,
Kovalyonok reportedly noticed something strange out of a window onboard and went to investigate.
According to his account, what he saw next was an object unlike anything he’d ever seen in the sky
before - two glowing orbs connected by a single line, later said to have resembled a barbell.
The distinguished cosmonaut noted that the object was particularly strange because it
had seemed to pulse… and it apparently had some sort of gas discharging from one end. Kovalyonok
continued watching until he says something else extraordinary happened… both of the orbs exploded.
The two spheres that had been there were then replaced by clouds of smoke, before fading away
completely. The space journalist and historian Jim Oberg has since researched the sighting further,
reportedly arriving at a seemingly more rational explanation for what might have been seen - that
the barbell-like vision was really the result of a secret missile test. However,
no missile tests were recorded on that day and, so, still no explanation has been found.
Ivan Vagner is another Russian cosmonaut who saw something unexplained in space, but this time only
after the fact. In 2020 he was onboard the International Space Station and was attempting
to take a time-lapse of the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights, a phenomenon like the Northern
Lights but in the southern hemisphere. Vagner succeeded in getting the footage,
but when he went back to look over the pictures, he noticed something that he hadn’t initially
seen. He’d recorded five bright objects that appeared to be traveling in a line above Earth
at exactly the same speed, capturing them on screen for about a minute before they suddenly
vanished. In a tweet where he posted the video, he referred to the objects
as “Space Guests.” He also notified Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, and reportedly received
a reply that read “An interesting and at the same time mysterious video…”. At the time,
Vagner himself theorized that the strange shapes could’ve been meteors or satellites… although the
suggestion that they might’ve been something altogether more alien has never gone away. It
doesn’t appear as though an official answer has been given for the sightings yet, from Roscosmos,
NASA, or anyone else. Whether or not the objects were actually alien in nature, then, is unknown…
but Ivan Vagner certainly saw something strange that day, while orbiting far above planet Earth.
Our third bizarre space sighting comes from yet another accomplished astronaut, James McDivitt,
who flew on both the Gemini and Apollo missions for NASA in the 1960s, and later became the
Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager. During the Gemini 4 mission in 1965, however, he reportedly
noticed something unusual outside his vehicle while his partner, fellow astronaut Ed White,
was asleep. A cylindrical object with a white pole, that he later described as being shaped
like a beer can with a smooth pencil sticking out of it. Upon recalling his experience during
a NASA interview, McDivitt says he immediately grabbed a camera to take a photo of it… but was
unable to focus the shot in time, and missed his chance as the spacecraft rotated around. And when
he tried to maneuver the craft back to the same spot, he failed to find it again. It means that,
unfortunately, in the pictures, nothing of the object can be seen. And, due to the emptiness
of the space around it, it wasn’t possible for McDivitt to tell how big the object was, either,
without a frame of reference. It might’ve been tiny, it might’ve been massive. Official records
were, of course, checked for what the strange and unexpected something could have been… but again
nothing came up. There apparently weren’t any objects around the ship at that time on radar,
to match the description. So, what had James McDivitt really witnessed?
Finally, there’s the UFO claim put forward by another esteemed NASA astronaut,
Gordon Cooper, only this time the “unidentified object” wasn’t seen in space, but on Earth.
Although Cooper was Command Pilot of Gemini 5 in 1965, his sighting occurred earlier in his career,
when he was working as an Air Force pilot in the 1950s. Again, according to his own accounts over
the years since, Cooper claims to have noticed a few objects hovering around a base during an
otherwise routine flight over Germany. And what reportedly made the appearance of them
seem especially odd was that they were positioned as though in formation. It’s said that Cooper
didn’t think they were any kind of government aircraft, however, based on his own extensive
knowledge of flying machines. Instead, they were round, metallic discs with no clear propulsion
system. Their erratic movements were apparently difficult to track and impossible to follow. They
accelerated extremely quickly in any direction. Cooper had been exceptionally well-versed in all
types of aircraft thanks to his military career, and he had reportedly been given a high clearance
level in the Air Force so it’s thought unlikely that he would not have known about any kind of
secret technology... so what was going on? Importantly, there’s a distinction to be made in
all these cases between believing in UFOs and believing in aliens. And the list of people who
claim to have actually seen aliens is much shorter than the list reporting a UFO experience. For
those more inclined to skepticism where UFOs are concerned, most claims are likely missightings,
where an ordinary object is mistakenly transformed into something extraordinary. But some reports
are perhaps a little harder to refute… and testimony from people who have really been
to space certainly demands attention! What’s your verdict on the examples in this video? Can they be
explained? Are they harmless or an indication of something more sinister? Whatever side you fall
on, the debate is sure to rumble on… because those are four alleged UFOs seen by astronauts.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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