NASA UFO Sightings

NASA has never actually denied that its astronauts have witnessed anomalies in space; the organisation merely maintains that any such anomalies should not automatically be viewed as extra-terrestrial phenomenon. The organisation has even published photographs of such unidentified aerial objects: each of the photographs on this page was taken by NASA and simply labelled 'unknown object' without any attempt to explain what the sighting might be. This policy seems a reasonable one, yet there is evidence that some of the objects noted in space simply cannot be accounted for without exploring the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Together with information given by astronauts themselves, it appears that there is at least a case to answer. So why the apparent unwillingness to make information more widely available within the public domain? Firstly, it will be remembered that the 1960 Brooking Report commissioned by NASA warned that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe could cause civilisations of Earth to collapse.

Secondly, although NASA is a civilian agency, it is actually financed in part by the US Department of Defense, and in the past, most astronauts were active duty military officers on detached status to NASA. In effect, all were subject to the military regulations, and if these regulations were broken, fines and penalties awaited. It simply wasn't worth going public in the depths of the Cold War. Today, society is more open, and an increasing number of those 'who know' are coming forward with accounts of their knowledge and experiences. (It should also be remembered that the National Security Agency monitors all NASA transmissions and screens all footage taken on missions - another method to prevent information leaking into the public domain.) Yet, as noted, many credible witnesses have come forward to confirm that something is going on 'out there' that cannot be accounted for by natural or terrestrial phenomena. The story starts in 1951 when former Mercury astronaut Donald 'Deke' Slayton (above) claimed that he had observed an unknown object whilst test flying aircraft for the American military. He revealed the following in an interview for the National Enquirer in 1979;

"I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then realised that no kite is gonna fly that high. As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, grey and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disc. About the same time, I realised that it was suddenly going away from me - and there I was, running at about 300 miles an hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared. A couple of days later I was having a beer with my commanding officer, and I thought, 'what the hell, I'd better mention something to him about it'. I did, and he told me to get on down to intelligence and give them a report. I did and I never heard anything more on it." (1)

The first astronaut to definitely observe anomalous phenomena in orbit around the Earth was Major Gordon Cooper during the May 15th 1963 Faith 7 Mercury flight mission. Whilst making his fourth pass over Hawaii, Cooper claims he heard strange voices transmissions which he described as being "unintelligible foreign language" (2). Later these tapes were analysed, however the garble used could not be identified as any known language. On his final orbit around the Earth whilst over the Muchea Tracking Station near Perth, Australia, Cooper claimed to have sighted a strange looking object approaching him. Over two hundred people at the tracking station also observed this anomaly. Cooper described the object as being of "good size" and claimed "it was higher than I was. It wasn't even in the vicinity of the horizon". (3) Cooper (above) further stated, in an interview with Lee Spiegal in the 1980s, that an incident had occurred at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1957 or 1958 when he was Project Manager of the Test Flight Centre. He described how a flying 'disc' hovered over the dry lake "then it slowly came down and sat on the lake bed for a few minutes ... There were varied estimates by the cameramen (who filmed the entire incident) on what the actual size of the object was, but they all agreed that it was at least the size of a vehicle that would carry normal sized people in it."

Cooper did not witness the event itself, but studied the film footage. "It was a typical circular shaped UFO. Not too many people saw it, because it took off at quite a sharp angle and just climbed out of sight" (4). In 1994 Cooper gave more details of this incident, stating that the camera crew who were filming the installation of a landing system on the dry lake bed "came running in to tell me that this UFO - this saucer - had come right over them. And as they proceeded to go on over to get a closer shot of it, it lifted up, put the gear in the well, and disappeared at a rapid rate of speed. And so I had to follow my directions as a military; I had to look up the regulations on who I was to call or to report this, which I did. They ordered me to immediately have the films developed, put them in a pouch, and send them by the commanding general's airplane to Washington, which I did. That was the last I ever heard of the films." (5)

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