Culture and science
Astronaut reports, NASA statements and the NASA UAP study team. 88 events, newest first.
Skinwalker Ranch1999
Las Vegas real-estate owner Robert Bigelow founded Bigelow Aerospace to build expandable space habitats, later flying Genesis 1 and 2 and NASA's BEAM module. A Bigelow spin-off, BAASS, later held the Pentagon's AAWSAP contract and ran studies at the Utah ranch.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
MediaDec 1998
Photos of a dark, oddly shaped object taken during shuttle mission STS-88 were later promoted online as an ancient alien 'Black Knight' satellite. Astronaut Jerry Ross and former NASA engineer James Oberg identified it as a thermal blanket that drifted away during a spacewalk.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Government5 Apr 1998
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor photographed the Cydonia feature known as the 'Face on Mars' at ten times the resolution of the 1976 Viking image. The camera's operator, Malin Space Science Systems, describes the feature as one hill among the region's buttes and mesas that happened to resemble a face.
Sightings22 Jan 1997
A spent Delta II second stage reentered over Texas and Oklahoma before dawn on January 22, 1997, and parts survived to the ground in Texas. In Tulsa, Lottie Williams saw a bright streak and was then lightly hit by a small fragment that NASA linked to the rocket.
Photo: NASA/Regina Mitchell-Ryall & Jerry Cannon, Public domain
Sightings17 Nov 1996
Russia's Mars 96 probe, stranded in Earth orbit after a launch failure, reentered over the Pacific and northern Chile. Witnesses in the Atacama reported a fireball breaking up, and its roughly 200 g of plutonium in power units was thought to have reached the ground.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
MediaFeb 1996
After the TSS-1R tethered satellite broke loose from shuttle Columbia on STS-75, shuttle camera footage showed the tether amid many small drifting lights. UFO promoters later called it a swarm of craft; NASA and skeptics said the lights were debris and ice lit by sunlight.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center, Public domain
Whistleblowers1995
Hampton Roads published Unconventional Flying Objects by Paul R. Hill, a retired NASA Langley research manager, after his death. It applied aerospace engineering to reported UFO flight behavior; its conclusions are outside mainstream science.
Media28 Oct 1994
MGM released Roland Emmerich's Stargate, starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, which builds on the ancient-astronaut idea that an alien posed as an Egyptian god. It launched a long-running TV and film franchise.
Photo: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military1 Feb 1994
A meteoroid perhaps 4 to 14 m across exploded over the western Pacific, recorded by Defense Department infrared and Energy Department visible-light sensors in space. It was the brightest such blast those satellites had seen, and was later analyzed in published research.
Sightings9 Oct 1992
A bright, fragmenting fireball crossed several eastern U.S. states and was caught on at least 16 independent videos before a meteorite struck a parked car in Peekskill, New York. Scientists used the videos to reconstruct its orbit, a well-documented natural object in the sky.
Photo: Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings7 Feb 1991
The derelict Soviet space station Salyut 7 reentered uncontrolled over Argentina in the early hours of February 7, 1991. Witnesses described a long fiery trail across the sky, and fragments fell in several provinces, the largest in a yard in Capitan Bermudez. No injuries were reported.
Photo: Carloszelayeta, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings5 Nov 1990
Around 7 p.m. a bright luminous formation crossed much of France, and CNES's SEPRA received more than 1,100 witness reports and police statements. A NASA telex let SEPRA identify it as the reentering third stage of the Soviet rocket that launched the Gorizont 21 satellite.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Government27 Mar 1989
Contact with the Soviet Phobos 2 probe could not be restored on March 27, 1989, ending its mission at Mars; NASA's records attribute the loss to an on-board computer malfunction. An elongated shape in one of its last images was later promoted by some as a UFO.
Media1982
Space engineer and writer James Oberg published 'UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries: A Sympathetic Skeptic's Report' with Donning. Reviewers noted he examined astronaut and space-related UFO stories and hoax photos and concluded the evidence did not convince him.
Photo: RobertoTenore, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings11 Jul 1979
NASA's Skylab space station broke up on reentry and scattered debris across southern Western Australia. Esperance residents reported sonic booms and several bright orange lights crossing the sky, and recovered fragments are held at the Esperance Museum.
Photo: Rycho626 at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Government1 Feb 1978
NASA's Information Sheet 78-1 said NASA would answer public UFO inquiries sent to the White House but ran no UFO research program, and would analyze only bona fide physical evidence from credible sources, following its December 1977 reply to the President's science adviser.
Photo: Vargklo at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Sightings24 Jan 1978
The Soviet reactor-powered satellite Cosmos 954 reentered over western Canada and scattered radioactive debris across the Northwest Territories. Residents of Yellowknife and Hay River described a burning object trailing pieces; a joint U.S.-Canadian search followed. An identified sky event.
Photo: Federal Government of the United States, Public domain
GovernmentDec 1977
On July 21, 1977, Frank Press, science adviser to President Carter, wrote to NASA Administrator Robert Frosch proposing a panel to check for significant new UFO findings since the Condon Report. About five months later NASA answered that neither a research effort nor a symposium was justified.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Sightings20 Sep 1977
Before dawn, residents of Petrozavodsk in Soviet Karelia reported a huge glowing object shedding beams of light for about 10 minutes, and Soviet papers carried the story. Soviet researchers later attributed it to the launch of the Kosmos-955 satellite from Plesetsk.
Photo: Antonio Bonanno from Milan (Italy), Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government19 Sep 1976
A U.S. Embassy Rabat cable relayed Royal Gendarmerie reports of a silent, luminous disc or tube seen from Agadir to Fez early on Sept. 19, 1976, and King Hassan II's request for information. A satellite watcher later matched it to a reentering Soviet rocket stage.
Photo: Christian Lambiotte, CC BY 4.0
Government25 Jul 1976
NASA's Viking 1 orbiter photographed a mesa in Mars's Cydonia region whose shadows looked like a human face; NASA's 1976 caption called it an illusion. NASA says geologists attribute the landform to natural processes, and Mars Global Surveyor imaged it at ten times the resolution in 1998.
Photo: Viking 1, NASA, Public domain
Media5 Jan 1973
NBC aired In Search of Ancient Astronauts, a U.S. version of the German Chariots of the Gods documentary narrated by Rod Serling. It promoted von Daniken's ancient-astronaut claims, which scholars regard as pseudoscience, and preceded the In Search of... series.
Photo: CBS Television; portrait by Gabor Rona, Public domain
Media26 Apr 1970
Harald Reinl's West German documentary Erinnerungen an die Zukunft, built on Erich von Daniken's ancient-astronaut thesis, premiered aboard a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to New York. Scholars reject the thesis as pseudoscience, yet the film drew an Oscar nomination.
Photo: Michal Manas, CC BY 3.0
GovernmentJan 1969
A chapter of the Air Force-funded Condon report, by astronomer Franklin Roach, reviewed what Mercury and Gemini crews saw in orbit. It found most sightings explainable but judged three unexplained: two by James McDivitt on Gemini 4 and one by Frank Borman on Gemini 7.
Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public domain
Government29 Jul 1968
The House Committee on Science and Astronautics held a one-day symposium on UFOs chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. Six scientists, including J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald and Carl Sagan, presented views, and further papers were added to the printed record.
Photo: US Congress, Public domain
