'Space guests': Russian cosmonaut captures possible UFO footage from ISS
A new one-minute video captured by Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner while aboard the International Space Station (ISS) appears to show potential UFOs.
While passing over Antarctica and Australia, Vagner was recording video of aurora australis — the southern lights — but he managed to catch something else, too.
Vagner published the video in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
Space guests, or how I filmed the new time-lapse.
The peak of aurora borealis when passing over the Antarctic in Australia’s longitude, meaning in between them. However, in the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora. pic.twitter.com/Hdiej7IbLU
— Ivan Vagner (@ivan_mks63) August 19, 2020
Visible in the video are the glowing curve of the Earth and the ghostly green of the aurora moving across its surface, along with a smattering of stars far behind.
The “space guests” Vagner refers to in his tweet appear 9-12 seconds into the video in the form of a string of four to five lights arranged in a distinct diagonal line.
Since the video was shot in a time-lapse, the flash of “objects” which quickly appears and disappears in the video actually lasted for approximately 52 seconds.
The objects “appear flying alongside with the same distance,” Vagner wrote in further tweets. “What do you think those are? Meteors, satellites or … ?”
It’s unclear precisely when the footage was captured or whether Vagner observed the phenomenon first-hand or only noticed it upon reviewing the footage. No other personnel aboard the ISS have so far acknowledged it.
This mission is Vagner’s first aboard the ISS. According to a recent blog post by NASA, Vagner’s work on the station has involved maintenance on its orbital plumbing system as well as “exploring ways to improve Earth photography techniques.” He is working alongside Anatoli Ivanishin, also of Russia, and Chris Cassidy, the American commander of the expedition.
While NASA has yet to comment on the strange phenomenon, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos boosted Vagner’s tweet with the note: “An interesting and at the same time mysterious video made by cosmonaut of Roscosmos Ivan Wagner … from the International Space Station,” paired with a pensive-looking emoji.
Интересное и одновременно загадочное видео, сделанное космонавтом Роскосмоса Иваном Вагнером (@ivan_mks63) с борта Международной космической станции 🤔 https://t.co/zAm4TPmdk1
— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) August 19, 2020
The other ISS crew members have not addressed the footage but Vagner has reported that it has been submitted to Roscosmos experts who are reviewing it.
Russian news agency TASS has confirmed through spokesperson Vladimir Ustimenko that the mysterious video is being examined at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“It is too early to make conclusions until our Roscosmos researchers and scientists at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences tell us what they think,” Ustimenko said. “It was decided to hand over those materials to experts, who will tell us what that was in their opinion.”
Talk of outer space life and UFOs has long been considered silly or taboo, a topic for conspiracy theorists and wildcards. In recent years, however, the discussion of aliens and unidentified objects has become more mainstream.
Several factors have pushed this new wave, including a July New York Times article revealing that the U.S. government has funded research into the topic for years – research that is still ongoing — as well as a statement from the Pentagon acknowledging recorded encounters with “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
On August 14, the Pentagon announced that it had launched a UAP task force to “improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs.” The task force aims to “detect, analyze and catalogue UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
Alas, the phenomenon captured by Vagner is as yet unexplained.