Astronauts Saw Objects in Space. NASA Tried to Identify Them

A man from Maine wanted to know about objects astronauts had seen in space. Senator Chuck Grassley forwarded his request to NASA, the US space agency. The agency responded in a letter from 1998.

The response confirmed that astronauts had seen many objects during spaceflight. But “object” didn’t always mean something large or mysterious. According to NASA, some of the sightings were water droplets; others were debris from launch vehicles or spacecraft. And on lunar missions, the agency wrote, astronauts saw no objects they couldn’t identify.

What Passed by the Spacecraft?

NASA wrote that some objects were later identified with the help of photographs or records from NORAD, a system that tracks objects in space. According to the letter, the records and photographs helped identify some of the things seen near spacecraft.

The explanations included debris from launch vehicles or spacecraft. In other cases, what looked like an object was a water droplet. These are specific examples of the kinds of objects that were identified, even though the letter doesn’t say what any particular astronaut saw. A sighting in space that sounds unusual may turn out to be material left over from a mission or a tiny droplet.

NASA’s Answer About the Moon

NASA said no unidentified objects had been seen on lunar missions. The letter described no chase or dramatic encounter; it simply summarized what the agency knew about astronauts’ sightings.

The letter also noted that the US Air Force had received reports of such objects in the past and investigated them for years, but had stopped. NASA wrote that it had no program to investigate unidentified objects and had not withheld information about sightings.

What Remains Unknown

The letter doesn’t specify what every object was or what an astronaut saw in any particular case. It lists several explanations, including debris from launch vehicles or spacecraft and water droplets, and reports that no unidentified objects were seen on lunar missions.

In space, even a tiny droplet can look like a mystery.