UAP Case Archive

UAP Case Archive / From orbit

From orbit

Twenty-one accounts from astronauts and cosmonauts, seventeen of them from space or on the way to the Moon. Almost none claims an alien craft. In orbit, the usual answer turned out to be the crew's own hardware: ice, boosters, panels, even bags of trash.

    Gemini 4, 1965: a white cylinder with a pole sticking out, as Jim McDivitt described it. Drawing for reference only.
    Each account is one case, colored by status. Select one to open it below.

    Start with Gemini 4.

    Writing in 1978, space journalist James Oberg found only one American astronaut who said he had seen a UFO in space. Jim McDivitt meant an unidentified man-made object, and he has never claimed anything more.

    On June 4, 1965, Gemini 4 was drifting in orbit, low on fuel, while Ed White slept. Command pilot Jim McDivitt saw a white cylinder with a long arm or pole sticking out of one side, like a beer or pop can.

    He grabbed the two cameras floating in the cabin, took pictures, and fired his thrusters in case it was on a collision course. He had nothing to judge it by, he said, and could not tell its size or how far away it was.

    NASA released a frame from the movie camera before McDivitt had reviewed it. He said it shows a reflection of the sun on White's window, and that his own photos did not show the object. Searchers found no known man-made object closer than about 1,200 miles, and the Condon Report singled the sighting out as especially puzzling.

    What McDivitt saw, and what was said about it

    • His words"An unidentified man-made object." McDivitt never suggested anything else.
    • ProposedGemini 4's own spent Titan II second stage, according to Oberg. McDivitt has said it was not his booster.
    • ProposedA small piece breaking off the spacecraft, which McDivitt himself suggested in a 1999 NASA interview.
    • CorrectedThe famous NASA photo shows a sun reflection on the window, not the object.
    • OpenNo known object was close enough to match.

    What the record shows.

    Twenty-one accounts from 1951 to 2020. These patterns run through them.

    Almost no astronaut claims an alien craft in space.

    McDivitt's "unidentified man-made object" is the closest any U.S. astronaut has come, and that still holds.

    The strongest testimony comes from aircraft, not orbit.

    Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton in 1951, and Pavel Popovich on an airliner, were flying in the atmosphere. Those are pilot sightings, and should be judged like the aircrew cases on the shape pages.

    In orbit, the usual answer is the crew's own hardware.

    Spent boosters, panels shed at separation, frost and ice flakes, trash, and a loose antenna cover all travel alongside a spacecraft and catch the sun.

    Space strips away scale.

    With no air haze and no background, a fleck of ice close by and a rocket stage far away look alike. Lights on the ground can look strange from above too, as Leroy Chiao found with fishing boats.

    Misquotes and forgeries fill the popular lists.

    Much of the literature traces to one list printed in 1975. In 1976 J. Allen Hynek concluded that none of the authentic astronaut cases had anything to do with the UFO phenomenon.

    A 2026 Pentagon release brought some cases back.

    The first release of the Pentagon's PURSUE files in May 2026 included NASA records from Gemini 7 and Apollo 11, 12 and 17, including the Apollo 17 "triangle of dots" photograph.

    Often told wrong.

    Astronaut UFO stories are among the most misquoted in the subject. Here is what the record shows.

    The story you may have heardWhat the record shows
    Gordon Cooper saw a UFO on his 1963 Faith 7 flight.
    Oberg traces the "greenish UFO with a red tail" to a misquoted report of the southern aurora. Cooper later called the in-flight stories fabrications.
    The Gemini 4 photo shows what McDivitt saw.
    He said it is a sun reflection on Ed White's window, and he never touched the movie camera during the sighting.
    Gemini 7 photographed two glowing ovals.
    That picture is an airbrushed image of sunlight on two thrusters on the spacecraft's nose. Frank Borman's "bogey" was booster debris.
    Gemini 12 saw four UFOs in a row.
    They were bags of trash the crew had thrown overboard about an hour earlier.
    Buzz Aldrin admitted seeing a UFO on Apollo 11.
    His 2005 documentary remarks were edited. He identified the object as a panel from the Saturn V, and wrote in 2015 that it was not an alien.
    Gordon Cooper watched a saucer land at Edwards in 1957.
    He said a camera crew filmed it and he saw only the still negatives. The film has never surfaced.

    All astronaut and cosmonaut accounts.

    Listed oldest first. Each card links the account to the shape the astronaut described. Use the wave filter to read the Gemini and Apollo missions together.

      No sense of scale.

      On Earth, air haze and the landscape give the eye clues about distance. In orbit there are none. A small object a few feet from the window and a large one miles away can look exactly alike.

      McDivitt said so plainly: he could not tell whether he was seeing something small close by or something big far away. John Glenn's "fireflies" turned out to be flecks of frost from his own capsule. Apollo 11's "L-shaped" light was most likely a panel the size of a door, drifting a long way off.

      ice flake, 3 feet awayrocket stage, miles away With no haze or background, they look the same.

      Left off this page.

      These stories circulate widely but are not in this archive.

      • Gordon Cooper, Faith 7, 1963A misquoted report of the aurora; Cooper called the in-flight stories fabrications.
      • Aldrin "voice analysis," 2018A tabloid story, not an interview with Aldrin.
      • Kovalyonok's "beings and star maps"An embellished version of the 1981 Salyut 6 sighting with no traceable source. The documented account is included.
      • The 1975 list of astronaut sightingsIts stories are included only where they can be traced to a source.