UFO Sightings by Astronauts

There are few witnesses more credible than astronauts. Often, they are scientists, with excellent powers of observation and objectivity.

When an astronaut reports seeing a UFO, people will take note. In a live broadcast on NBC in 1963, Major Gordon Cooper, the last astronaut to orbit the earth solo, was completing his 22 orbit when he said he could see a glowing green object approaching fast. NASA had Major Cooper’s visual sighting and Muchea’s tracking station radar confirmation of this fast moving green glowing object, before it made a sharp turn and shot away. (This was not Major Cooper’s first UFO sighting. In 1951, he had sighted a UFO while piloting an F-86 Sabrejet over Western Germany.)

Upon his return to Earth, Major Cooper was not permitted to discuss his sighting with the media. Reporters were instructed not to question him about the UFO sighting.

Major Cooper testified before the United Nations: “I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets… Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs.” He added, “I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe.”

In a taped interview by J. L. Ferrando, Major Cooper said: “For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means.”

Major Cooper is not the only astronaut/NASA pilot to have witnessed UFOs.

Donald Slayton, a Mercury astronaut, in an interview asserted he had seen UFOs in 1951: “I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized 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 disk. About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from me – and there I was, running at about 300 miles per 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.”

On July 17, 1962, Major Robert White reported a UFO during his fifty-eight-mile high flight on an X-15, “I have no idea what it could be. It was grayish in color and about thrity to forty feet away.”

On May 11, 1962, NASA pilot Joseph Walker admitted that one of his tasks was to detect UFOs during his X-15 flights. He had filmed five or six UFOs during his previous record breaking fifty-mile-high flight in April, 1962. During a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washington, Walker said: “I don’t feel like speculating about them. All I know is what appeared on the film which was developed after the flight.” None of those films have been released for public viewing.

Apollo 17 commander, Eugene Cernan, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times in 1973, “…I’ve been asked (about UFOs) and I’ve said publicly I thought they (UFOs) were somebody else, some other civilization.”

There have been other sightings of UFOs by astronauts, but they are not as well documented as the ones above. Therefore, I have omitted them.

This article leaves little doubt that UFOs have been reported by credible witnesses and even recorded on radar. The evidence also suggests that those in authority are intentionally keeping such reports from the public to whatever extent they are able to do so.

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