Today, many hundreds, if not thousands of people around the world have seen UFOs in the sky. However, the official science is in no hurry to recognize their existence. Meanwhile, the mysterious objects were seen by cosmonauts, whose observation results can be trusted unconditionally.
GOLDEN BELL
The incident, which was told by Colonel-General of Aviation, twice Hero of the Soviet Union Vladimir Kovalenok, occurred on May 5, 1981 at about 18:00. At this time, the Salyut-6 space station, of which he was a member, flew over South Africa towards the Indian Ocean. Having finished performing the gymnastic exercises prescribed by the regulations, Kovalenok looked through the window and saw an incomprehensible object near the station.
In space, it is almost impossible to determine sizes and distances by eye. It may seem to the observer that he sees a small object very close, but in fact it will be something huge, but located at a great distance. And vice versa. But be that as it may, then something unusual appeared in the foreseeable space.
The outlandish object had an elliptical shape, flew at the same height with the station, on the same course, not approaching or moving away. At the same time, it seemed to rotate in the direction of movement, as if rolling forward along an invisible path laid in space.
And suddenly the astronaut was blinded by a flash of bright yellow light, reminiscent of a silent explosion. The object has turned into a sparkling golden ball. The sight was very beautiful. But it turned out that this is only the beginning. One or two seconds later, somewhere out of sight, there was probably another similar soundless explosion, because the astronaut saw a second, exactly the same bright gold ball. And then a cloud of smoke appeared nearby, which soon also acquired a spherical shape.
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The station flew east and soon approached the terminator, the dusk line that separates day from night. When she entered the shadow of the Earth and night fell, all three balls disappeared from sight. None of the crew members saw them again.
BALL
In 1990, while at the Mir station, cosmonaut Gennady Strekalov witnessed a very mysterious spectacle. The atmosphere was perfectly clear, with a distinctly visible Newfoundland floating under the Mir. Suddenly, something like a sphere appeared in the astronaut's field of vision.
In terms of brilliance and brightness, it resembled a Christmas tree toy - an elegant colored glass ball. Strekalov called the commander, Gennady Manakov, to the window.
Unfortunately, the "ball" could not be filmed, because, as always happens in such cases, the camera was not ready for use. They admired the colorful spectacle for about ten seconds.
The "sphere" disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. There was nothing around to compare its magnitude. Strekalov reported the object he had seen to the Mission Control Center, but at the same time described it as some kind of unusual phenomenon, without using the term UFO. According to him, he deliberately described only what he saw, while trying to choose expressions carefully and avoid unfounded definitions.
MYSTERIOUS SOMETHING
At the beginning of 1991, a spacecraft arrived from Earth was once again received at the Mir orbital complex. Musa Manarov sat at a large porthole and watched closely as the ship slowly approached the station. When he got close enough, the cosmonaut began filming the process of docking with a video camera. And suddenly he noticed some object under the ship, which at first he took for his antenna.
Then, looking closer, I realized that this was not an antenna at all. “So, some other detail of the construction,” thought Manarov. But the next moment this "detail" began to move relative to the ship, moving away from it. Musa grabbed the voice communication microphone with the ship and shouted: "Hey guys, you've lost something!" There, of course, they got alarmed.
However, the rather solid practice of docking ships in space shows that during the stage of docking that was taking place at the moment, there was simply nothing to break off the ship.
If any part detaches from it, then this happens during launch, during maneuvering, turns - that is, in those cases when significant overloads are acting on the ship. And now both spacecraft were slowly and smoothly approaching each other.
At the next moment, the mysterious "something" began, as it were, to fall under the ship, to fall down. When the ship ceased to obscure it, the station's crew focused all their attention on the strange object.
It seemed to the astronauts that it was spinning. It was difficult to determine its size and distance from the station. The observers only assumed that the object was not very close to the station, therefore, to shoot it, the camera lens was adjusted to infinity.
If this object was any small object nearby (a bolt or something like that), then when shooting it would be out of focus. Subsequently, the assumption was confirmed: apparently, at the time of shooting, it was at least 100 meters away. It was this distance that separated the Mir from the ship at that time, and the object seemed to be behind it.
Perhaps he was some form of UFO. What it really was is impossible to say with certainty. It can only be argued that the object was neither an element of space debris, nor a part of any rocket or satellite, because in this case its existence would have been known in advance. Special surveillance services, both in Russia and in the United States, keep records and track the location of all fairly large objects in space.
At any given time, the crews of spaceships and orbital stations know where such objects are located and in what direction. And if such an object approached Mir, the cosmonauts would have been warned about it in advance. Moreover, they were informed that at that time there was nothing of the kind in the area of the station.
TRIANGLE
- In my life there was only one case when I met with something unknown, with a phenomenon that neither I nor anyone else could explain, - said Major General of Aviation, Candidate of Technical Sciences, twice Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Popovich. - It happened in 1978, during our flight from Washington to Moscow.
We flew at an altitude of about 10,000 meters. I was in the cockpit and through the front window I suddenly saw that about 1,500 meters above us, a sparkling white object in the form of an equilateral triangle was flying in a parallel course, resembling a sail in appearance.
The plane in which the astronaut was traveling flew at a speed of 900 kilometers per hour, but the object easily overtook it. According to Popovich, the speed of the "sail" was one and a half times higher than that of the air liner.
The astronaut immediately reported the strange object to the crew and passengers. Together they tried to determine what it might be. But no one could identify the mysterious triangle with anything he knew. It did not look like an airplane, as it had a perfectly triangular shape, and at that time triangular airplanes did not exist.
SILVER BALL
In September 1990, during a regular communication session with the Earth, Gennady Manakov gave an interview to Russian journalist Leonid Lazarevich. Answering the questions of the journalist, the cosmonaut mentioned "extremely interesting phenomena over the Earth" that he and his commander Strekalov observed. Here's how he described one such episode:
- Yesterday, at about 22:50, we saw what is commonly called an unidentified flying object. It was a huge sparkling silver ball. The sky was completely cloudless, clear. I can't say exactly at what height above the Earth this UFO was, but I think it was 20-30 kilometers. The ball was very large, much larger than the largest spacecraft. It seemed to us that the UFO hovered motionless over the Earth. It had a well-defined contour and regular shape, but what it was, I cannot say. We watched this object for six or seven seconds and then it disappeared.
Sergey MILIN