Astronauts on Skylab 3 photographed GIANT UFO 1973

here is another UFO event involving NASA that took place in 1973. Astronauts on board the Skylab 3 space station took photographs of an unidentified object.

astronauts Alan Bean, Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma spotted what they described as a red "satellite", which they photographed and mentioned during a subsequent debriefing:

LOUSMA: "Did you tell him about that satellite we saw?
BEAN: Yes, we saw a great satellite. We didn't know if we told you about it.
LOUSMA: The closest and brightest one we've seen.
BEAN: Huge one.

there was no man-made satellite that could explain this sighting and hence the object was truly anomalous.

www.dailygrail.com...

www.ufocasebook.com...

Never heard this one. interesting account so any other deeper investigation on this one? it seams like that video was a piece of a bigger one.odd shape of craft.

reply to post by easynow

NICE find!

I've never heard about this either, are you planning on a follow up bit of research to see if they ever identified it?

Springer...

Nice one Easynow! Good find my friend. That Skylab III "anomaly" is one that is pretty glaring, what with the photographic evidence and the confirmation from the astronauts themselves. It is interesting how that case is not cited more often, as it truly is one that should raise eyebrows.

Typically, judging relative distance/size of an unknown object by visual/photographic means alone is very difficult in space, but thanks to imagery and the terminator crossover time variances between Skylab and the object being known (counted off like "one-one thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one thousand..." according to astronaut Garriott), the estimations of size do seem to have validity. Here is some other evidence related to this incident that I have cataloged.

Radio Conversation (transcript only) with Houston CapCom about 4.5 hours after the sighting of this object.

LOUSMA: "Did you tell him about that satellite we saw?

BEAN: Yes, we saw a great satellite. We didn't know if we told you about it.
LOUSMA: The closest and brightest one we've seen.
BEAN: Huge one.
LOUSMA: We've seen several. It was a red one.
CAPCOM: No, you may have told somebody, but it wasn't this team. I don't remember hearing about it.
LOUSMA: I guess we didn't report it. It was reflecting in red light and oscillating at, oh, counting it's period of brightest to dimmest, about ten seconds. It led us into sunset. That was about three revs ago, I think. Something like that, wasn't it Owen?

(NOTE: Astronaut Owen does NOT respond to this question, and the topic of conversation abruptly changes. There is no information available regarding whether or not this sighting was brought to the attention of Mission Control prior to this radio contact 4.5 hours after the event).

Conversation during post-flight debrief, from “Skylab III Technical Crew Debriefing” (NASA doc JSC-08478)

GARRIOTT: Do you want to talk about that satellite?
LOUSMA: I saw a couple of satellites that appeared like a satellite would on earth. I saw one that was not like one you would see on earth, so why don't you mention it?
GARRIOTT: OK. About a week or 10 days before recovery and we were still waiting for information to be supplied to us about the identification. Jack first notices this rather large red star out the wardroom window. Upon close examination, it was much brighter than Jupiter or any of the other planets. It had a reddish hue to it, even though it was well above the horizon. The light from the Sun was not passing close to the Earth's limb at the time. We observed it for about 10 minutes prior to sunset. It was slowly rotating because it had a variation in brightness with a 10-seconds period. As I was saying, we observed it for about 10 minutes, until we went into darkness, and it also followed us into darkness about 5-seconds later. From the 5 to 10 second delay in it's disappearance we surmised that it was not more than 30 to 50 nautical miles [35 to 58 statute miles or 56 to 93 km] from our location. From its original position in the wardroom window, it did not move more than 10 or 20 degrees over the 10 minutes or so that we watched it. Its orbit was very close to that of our own. We never saw it on any earlier or succeeding orbits and we'd be quite interested in having its identification established.”

Note also that page 49 of the “SkyLab III Photographic Index and Scene Identification” document identifies this object as being a “Satellite - unmanned”.
ntrs.nasa.gov...

I am sure I have all four images in question (SL3-118-2138 through to 2141) on my other hard-drive and I will dig around for them, although I am pretty certain that frames 2140 and 2141 (the images Easynow shows above) are the best of the four. Again, great job pointing this incident out bro! It is definitely one that has never been explained.

Cheers!

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[edit on 12/7/2008 by Badge01]

ok.....don't you love how these guys play soooooo dumb! this is after 7 years of continuous anomalies and these guys are like "uh, big satellite?"

please.

i would like to hear a transcript during the sighting.

reply to post by Z.S.P.V.G.


Ya actually hearing the astronauts discribe the object would be wonderful, although that is probably a piece of information that will avoid our grasp.

That UFO looks like some kind of underwater organism you'd see on the Discovery channel.

Only...HUGE.

Nice find.

- Lee

reply to post by Springer



Thanks Springer

yes i am currently trying to locate more information about this incident and from what i have found out so far i don't believe this object was ever identified or at least publicly noted.

i have found a couple places on the web where James Oberg has made statements concerning this particular object, but all it amounted to was him very briefly saying it was probably a satellite and the squiggly lines are a photo defect.

Strange squiggle photo from Skylab is probably a film or camera fault, since crew testimony and other photos show this was a bright point source -- clearly a nearby artificial satellite.

www.debunker.com...

i think some more analysis of the photos are needed to determine if the look of this object has been created by a camera fault , but either way there was something close enough to the space station for these astronauts to photograph and it wasn't being tracked by NORAD ???









edit spelling

[edit on 3-12-2008 by easynow]

Originally posted by Z.S.P.V.G.
i would like to hear a transcript during the sighting.

You and me both brother! Unfortunately, when I tried to dig up a direct transcript of this incident from the Skylab "Channel-A" internal tape recorder (basically like the DSE and DSEA "black box" recorders used during Apollo that recorded internal crew conversations), NASA says that the recorder was not active during this period of time (16:35 GMT to 16:45 GMT on Sept 20, 1973).
The reason the tape was not recording as it was supposed to be? According to NASA's official excuse, it was because the tape had run out and had not been replaced on time. Thus, no audio of the actual event in question as it is occurring exists for us to have a listen to (and if you are willing to buy that excuse from NASA, then I have some nice oceanfront property for sale just outside of Kandahar, Afghanistan you might be interested in too!)

The astronauts however were definitely under the impression that the Channel A tape had picked up this conversation, because astronaut Garriott actually references it during the post-mission debrief on October 4, 1973! Here is Garriott referring to this very event, telling the debriefers that they can go and use the Channel A tape to verify the timing and location data for the sighting of this object exactly. (Sorry, I should have included this quote in my earlier above post, as Garriott makes this comment immediately after mentioning how he and his crewmates were "quite interested in having its [the object] identification established."

GARRIOTT: It's all debriefed in terms of time on channel A, so the precise timing and location can be picked up from there." (page 20-2 of Skylab III Technical Crew Debriefing)

But don't worry gang! They are not hiding anything from us! Trust me!

Is the astronaut involved Owen Garriott, father of Richard Garriott who just returned from a recent space trip? Hrmm very interesting.

www.richardinspace.com...



[edit on 2-12-2008 by Grimbone]

reply to post by LunaCognita


Excellent post LunaCognita

thank you my friend for the great information and i was very interested in seeing the rest of the conversation from the Astronauts. also thank you for the PDF file i will be examining that in more detail.

i would really love to see the other three photos and if you can find them to post i would very very much appreciate your time and effort.

thanks again

reply to post by easynow



Ok..I am not understanding this, the astronauts themselves have identified it as a satellite, so why is this being doubted?

reply to post by NavalFC


i think you need to reread the transcript LunaCognita posted because it's clear to me the Astronauts did not really know what they were seeing. they may have called it a satellite just to avoid the UFO word ?

the fact remains they didn't know what it was and it didn't look like other satellites, so what does that tell you ?

it was an unidentified object to them.

reply to post by easynow


But even the NASA docs identify it as a unmanned satellite.

reply to post by easynow


Sure thing bro. I just dug them out. Hopefully, this works ok, as I just upped them to Photobucket but admit I haven quite mastered attaching images to posts yet.

For some reason, I don't have frame 2140 (I thought I had all four of 'em), but I do have 2138, 2139, and 2141. My version of 2141 is not as overexposed as yours (which would have been done to try to reveal more of the shape/shading characteristics of the object), and in all three frames the "reddish hue" the astronaut's spoke of is, well, obvious to say the least.

SL3-118-2138


SL3-118-2139


SL3-118-2141


Boy, it sure would be nice if the actual sighting had been recorded and a transcript was available, because I am willing to bet that it would reveal the astronauts took a hell of a lot more than only FOUR photographs of this thing over the 10 minute period they were observing it.

Cheers!

[edit on 2-12-2008 by LunaCognita]

Well Done! Easynow your always on the ball with ufo related matters and thanks for this story.



Star and Flagged

reply to post by LunaCognita


it almost looks like this satellite
but why it would be so red, and why nasa wouldn't be able to identify it or norad for that matter is beyond me.

and to navalFC , what else are they supposed to call it when it's obviously in some form of stable orbit?

reply to post by LunaCognita


thank you, thank you, for the pics LunaCognita

i agree with you that these photos are not as impressive at first sight but when factoring in the distance that these were supposedly taken from i would have to say i am impressed with all of them.

the red color has me baffled i have to admit. what would cause that to look a constant red color ? you would think if it was the Earth's atmosphere affecting a reflection off a satellite it would not be a constant red color ? strange

also i agree with you that if the Astronauts were that interested in this , they would have taken more than four photos and i also find it suspicious that the flight recorder was out of tape at the time of this incident.
how convenient

well thanks again my friend i owe you one for sure

reply to post by NavalFC

But even the NASA docs identify it as a unmanned satellite.

the document does not tell you what satellite it was and until i see somekind of documentation that shows me that it was in fact a satellite i have to question it's origin.

the burden of proof works on both sides of an investigation and so far i havent seen anything to prove this was just a satellite or an Alien craft.

i will revert back to my Op here to show you that other researchers have looked into this and from what i can tell they cannot find the information that proves this was a satellite.

Maccabee and Sparks use the available data to look at various explanations for the object, such as whether it was a Soviet satellite. After a lengthy analysis, they conclude:

Based on the available information, these authors conclude that there was no man-made satellite that could explain this sighting and hence the object was truly anomalous

www.dailygrail.com...

so just because NASA labled this as a unmanned satellite does not in my opinion justify using occam's razor thinking to dismiss this without further investigation.

reply to post by NavalFC


In terms used by NASA and astronomers, a satellite is defined simply as a body of material in orbit around a larger body. By this definition, the moon is a satellite. The astronauts were simply stating that they saw an object in orbit around the earth, and didn't use any more specific terms because they didn't know what else to call it. The term UFO carries a certain career-ending stigma around it, so its quite understandable that they didn't attempt to identify the object.