Astronauts Were Shocked to Find This in Space

we’ve barely scratched the surface of our own world so of course we’re also in the dark about what outer space might be hiding aliens signs of alien life organisms we just don’t know although astronauts have certainly learned more than the average person from fireflies to music here are 20 creepiest things seen by astronauts number 20 fireflies the now deceased john glenn was well known for being an astronaut on a nasa manned space flight he was also a u.s senator and a mercury 7 test pilot crew member in 1962 john became the third american in space and he was also the first american to orbit earth for an extended period but you might also think his name’s familiar for another reason jon saw what looked like fireflies in space they’re one of the last things you’d expect to see outside of earth his description became so well known that a recreation of it was seen in the space race epic film called the right stuff john described seeing a giant mass of tiny particles that were lit up like they were luminescent he said they looked like little stars and that he’d never seen anything like it before jon also described a shower of them passing by swirling around the capsule and going in front of the window they were seven or eight feet apart and were also present below him a communications member asked if they were making impact with the capsule but he said they weren’t he said they were going slightly under the speed of his capsule after jon spent about five hours circling the globe a few times and touching down in the atlantic ocean he explained what he had seen in more detail nasa scientists believe they were just illuminated frost flakes before we go on like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or this centipede will crawl on your face when you’re sleeping [Music] now it’s time for the star topic when a russian astronaut touched back down on earth she was ashen-faced and quite clearly shaken it was almost like she had seen a ghost but as she later explained she kind of believes she did this photo is a recreation of what she says she saw the astronaut said that she saw a ghoulish looking face peering at her through the spacecraft window while they were away from earth and all on-board astronauts were truly shocked to find this in space what do you think comment down below with the hashtag star topic and let us know your opinion in relation to what we just showed on screen with that said let’s keep things moving number 19 a spatula after you did something wrong as a child did your parents ever tell you they’d whoop your butt into space well nasa called and they found your mom’s spatula can you believe spatulas have been lost in space who’s flipping pancakes up there in 2006 discovery space walker pierce sellers was using a spatula to place black goo or non-oxide adhesive onto brittle plates of reinforced carbon carbon the goal was to see if they could perform space shuttle repairs after foam insulation from a fuel tank breached the carbon-carbon shielding during a 2003 launch this damage resulted in the orbiter disintegrating when it returned to earth two weeks later when pierce was performing the practice repair he accidentally let go of the spatula and it drifted off into space pierce said it’s gone gone gone as he watched the 14-inch spatula float over the shuttle starboard side halfway into the flight piers later confirmed that the spatula entered the atmosphere about four months later the north american aerospace defense command sent him a photo with an x on it and some coordinates identifying that it fell into the atlantic ocean after its adventure through space number 18 a space suit you’d probably be quite concerned if you were to see a space suit floating through space did someone become separated from their space shuttle they’d surely now be dead fortunately anyone who caught a glimpse of a space suit in 2006 didn’t have to panic there was no one inside it crew members from the international space station threw a worn out russian spacesuit over the side but it wasn’t just a random act of littering the spacesuit named suitsat was on a critical mission a battery-powered radio transmitter was placed inside it and an antenna on the helmet to send signals to earth for a few days those signals would be a series of temperature readings specially coded messages for ham radio listeners and a slow scan tv image the project was actually for students and schools sent hundreds of pictures poems artworks and signatures that were put onto a cd and placed inside the suit sat a copy of the cd was also kept at the space station the batteries would only last for a few days and after a while the spacesuit would burn up in the atmosphere but it was a bit of space fun for a lot of people number 17 lights the international space station is a space environment research lab for astronauts in space they carry out experiments and perform space walks while tethered to it while many astronauts have used the space station and are very familiar with it that doesn’t make it any less scary according to dr leroy chao you’re always hyper aware that you’re in a dangerous situation while walking in space if the tether comes undone you’ll just float away and its curtains closed during the spacewalk dr chow encountered something that made his blood run cold he saw a series of lights that seemed to fly by him he said there were four in a line that passed by the station and his heart leaped into his throat the mystery of the lights went unsolved for a long time and dr chao always wondered what he had seen according to some reports his russian crewmate was facing away from the lights at the time and didn’t see anything the space station camera also picked up nothing former nasa engineer james smith was curious and viewed the satellite images from when dr chao had his strange experience the photos actually confirmed his story but that doesn’t provide an explanation james came up empty after ruling out satellite paths and military air force exercises so he turned his attention to activities on the ground that was when he realized that commercial fishing fleets in south america use massive lights for fishing at night the boats were in a line up the coast and the earth’s rotation made it look like they were flying number 16 alien snake i’ve seen a snake out there six seven eight feet long it’s rubbery because it has internal waves in it and it follows you for a rather long period of time if a random member of the public said they saw a snake in space they’d likely be assessed by a mental health team but what if it was an astronaut that description comes from story musgrave an american physician and retired astronaut with nasa if he believes he saw a snake in space then could he have seen a snake in space well according to story the more you fly in space the more you see and that brings a certainty that other living creatures are out there story said that some are just single celled organisms proteins and amino acids while others are more primitive when omni magazine interviewed him story said he photographed what he called the snake on two flights it was like a seven foot eel swimming out there when asked what he thought was in the wider galaxy he said living creatures that are far more developed as civilizations he said he might be considered eccentric for making an effort to communicate but he tells them to come down and get him although he did admit that the alien snake might have been a rubber seal from the main engines number 15 dancing fairies when don petit was on a mission at the international space station in 2012 he saw flashes in his eyes that looked like luminous dancing fairies the scientific attention these dancing fairies were given was incredible and experiments were carried out to confirm that they weren’t fairies instead they were free-moving sub-atomic particles from distant stars caused by cosmic rays i mean that’s still cool but not as cool as fairies but that brings us to the next point about hallucinations many astronauts have reported seeing hearing and smelling things and research into those things hasn’t revealed anything out of the ordinary is it all in the astronauts heads well possibly according to nasa behavioral and psychiatric conditions are actually among the most significant risks on their missions there’s also now evidence to suggest that space travel is mind-altering mission control has to focus as much on the mission as they do on their astronauts psychological health especially as they’re working in high-risk high-stress environments such a long way away from home hallucinations have been linked with space mission stress and crew coherence breakdown an example of this was in 1976 when the russian soyuz 21 mission crew had to return to earth prematurely after reporting a bad smell at the salute 5 space station there were concerns of a fluid leak but no technical or odor problems were identified reports of interpersonal and psychological issues led nasa to believe the smell was probably a hallucination number 14 faces on mars when you see pictures of the red planet it’s only natural to see if you can spot anything out of the ordinary after all we want to believe that alien life exists and if you can capture signs of that you can prove that it does seeing faces on mars may not be proof of life but it’s pretty cool to see lumps bumps and shadows line up so perfectly that you really do think you see a face the first human looking face aptly named the face on mars was taken by the american viking one orbiter in july 1976. a nasa press release said the formation looked like a human head but nasa scientists quickly confirmed that it wasn’t a human head rather it was an optical illusion caused by the angle of the sun the surface and shadows you ended up seeing what looked like a nose eyes and a mouth now we are always looking for faces another photo taken in 2007 from the esa’s mars express spacecraft’s high resolution stereo camera showed the crater gall which is informally called the happy face crater it’s an area without the bright red coating you come to expect from mars due to wind activity but has what looks like two eyes and a mouth protruding from a large circle number 13 elliptical shaped object many thousands of people have claimed to have seen ufos and scientists always seem to have an explanation for what they saw but it can be so much harder to come up with answers for the things that astronauts have seen especially when they’re the ones seeing it up close and personal not the scientists an example of this was vladimir kovalenock a member of the crew aboard the salute 6 space station in 1981. they were flying over south africa toward the indian ocean and had been performing their required gymnastic exercises after that was over vladimir looked out the window and saw something near the station vladimir said what he saw in front of him through the porthole was nothing he could explain he said the elliptical shaped object seemed to go against all the laws of physics and flew with them as he viewed it from the front it almost looked like it was rotating in flight direction but that wasn’t even the best part vladimir reported that it flew straight then exploded in golden light a second explosion followed seconds later and two golden beautiful spheres appeared then he just saw white smoke and a cloud-like sphere before they entered earth’s shadow and he never saw them again number 12 music you would definitely be shocked if you heard music playing in space especially if it wasn’t coming from your space shuttle when apollo 10 astronauts orbited the moon in 1969 they noticed a very odd whistling sound they described it as outer space type music and that was probably the inspiration for the whistling type alien music created ever since in audio recordings from the mission you can hear the lunar module pilot astronaut gene cernan asking john young the pilot of the command module if he hears the whistling sound sheen described it as music and said it sounds outer spacey jean and john then ask tom stafford who’s in the lunar module with gene if they hear it they all agree that it’s really weird and that they’re gonna have to find out about it as nobody will believe them when they heard the whistling sounds they were on the far side of the moon and had no radio or visual contact with mission control for about an hour which by the way is entirely normal knowing they are completely alone for that time is likely quite anxiety inducing so hearing unusual sounds probably put them on a high alert they never discussed the sounds publicly but they are likely still a mystery to this day number 11 ufo encounter gordon cooper was an american air force pilot test pilot and aerospace engineer he was also the youngest of seven astronauts in project mercury the united states first human space program gordon claims to have seen a ufo and flying over west germany in 1951. six years later when he worked with a crew setting up an ascanius in a theater light precision landing system on a dry lake bed he had yet another story to tell gordon said that the synod theodolite system they set up took photos at 30 frames per second as an aircraft landed jack gettys and james biddick who were working at the site said they had seen a strange-looking saucer-like aircraft it didn’t make a sound when it landed or took off gordon said that both men were no strangers to experimental aircraft since it was part of their regular work but they were unnerved by what they saw they said it hovered over them landed about 50 yards away on extended landing gears and took off as they ventured up for a closer look the men called the pentagon to report it and they were told to develop their film but make no prince up until his death gordon claimed the u.s government was covering up information about ufos and that his fellow pilots had made hundreds of reports number 10 tool bag when you’re at work and you drop something you can just bend down and pick it up but if you drop something while working in space well you’ll never see it again former nasa astronaut haida marie stephanie piper was on the nasa sts-126 shuttle mission and was performing a spacewalk to repair a bulky solar array joint at the international space station as she was getting ready to do the repairs a series of unfortunate events unfolded a grease gun was leaking inside a tool bag and the 30 pound tool bag containing grease guns trash bags and a scraper tool wasn’t secured properly it drifted free when haida marie was trying to clean up the mess the leaking grease gun had created she pondered whether she should jump to grab the bag for a moment but realized that wouldn’t be the right decision to make if she did there’d be two objects floating in space one of them being her so it joined the nineteen thousand other pieces of space trash according to the u.s air force’s joint space operations center which had been tracking the tool bag worth around a hundred thousand dollars it had burned up when it entered the earth’s atmosphere that’s an expensive whoopsie number nine screaming witch head nebula when you think of outer space you might just picture a whole lot of nothingness but there can be so much more than you think on halloween in 2012 nasa released an incredible picture from their wide field infrared survey explorer also known as wise this picture specifically was chosen because it’s called the witch head nebula that’s because it really does look like a wicked witch it has what appears to be green smoke and the faint outline of a witch with a long warty pointy nose the screaming witch head nebula is basically a nursery for stars this is where baby stars are brewing and growing and huge stars are lighten them up nasa also wrote that the glowing is related to starlight hitting the dust in the cloud then being illuminated by nasa’s wise detectors there are actually many spooky nebulas like the screaming witch head there’s one called the witch’s broom which is about 1 500 light years from earth and others that look like ghosts flaming skulls and even wizards while the wise space telescope was retired in 2011 it was revived in 2013 to look for dangerous asteroids that might threaten earth number eight glass domes on the moon alan bean was among many things a nasa astronaut he was the fourth person to walk on the moon and had his successful landing at age 37 in 1969 as part of the apollo 12 mission alan bean was also the last living apollo 12 crew member up until his death at age 86. alan did see something interesting on the moon but it actually wasn’t him who came up with shocking theories about what he saw allen said that he described space as looking like black patent leather shoes that was all he said and a conspiracy theorist ran with it richard c hoagland who’s known for his alternate space theories said that space should be inky black and velvet black it should be an unending infinite endless black it shouldn’t be shiny says someone who hasn’t been to the moon from allen’s comment richard deduced that allen must have been seeing space through a glass dome’s reflection however richard who has many conspiracy theories about nasa mars the moon and lost alien civilizations has been described as a fringe pseudo-scientist and conspiracy theorist so yeah take from that what you will number seven fire burning without a flame so much can go wrong in space people have died simply due to wrong calculations so you’d have to be completely insane to think it’s a good idea to take fire into space although clearly enough people were curious about what it’d be like so they decided to have a crack at it from 2009 until 2012 astronauts decided to light things on fire in space they were interested in seeing how it would burn in the cosmos or even if it would if i’m honest i’d be more concerned than curious especially if it might blow up the entire space station but they did it anyway and it was actually quite cool the fire burns at a lower temperature than on earth and with less oxygen fire can also burn without a flame in microgravity which is downright absurd according to the experiments project leader foreman williams the fire burning without flames was surprising he said they observed the continued burning of the heptane droplets even after the flame extinction under certain conditions they didn’t have an explanation for why it happened number six unidentified can like object james mcdivot is a former nasa astronaut and aeronautical engineer who flew in both the gemini and apollo programs he had a long and rewarding career and there were certainly a few highlights for example he basically saved everyone’s life on board the gemini spacecraft after encountering problems with its hatch the latch mechanism was prone to issues regarding the gears coming unmeshed and this made it hard to open and close the hatch james worked with an engineer to improvise a technique that would help them keep it closed if they didn’t come up with this solution they might not have survived reentry but another highlight was when he said he saw a ufo he said it looked like a soda or beer can with what looked like a pencil sticking out of it while he took photos of it he didn’t have time to focus it properly or set the exposure james said that it might have been quite close to the spacecraft as it was visible to him he believed it was probably a piece of multi-layer insulation that had broken off or maybe a bit of ice but as soon as the media got wind of the word ufo being used they were like a dog with a bone waiting for those gemini 4 photos to be processed number 5 orange glow it really pays not to say the word alien when you’re an astronaut otherwise conspiracy theorists start salivating and run with a story that’s quite far from the truth esa astronaut samantha christo ferretti had an unbelievable experience when she was approaching the international space station it was unbelievable but not alien in any sense of the word she was peering out of the soyuz spacecraft window as she reached the space station and saw something that very few astronauts get to experience it was the very moment that the sun caught the international space station solar panels when night turned today samantha got to witness a beautiful red glow that turned the spacecraft a blood orange color in a blog post she described her experience saying that the solar panels were inundated with vivid warm almost alien orange light she also said she couldn’t help but exclaim something out loud now of course conspiracy theorists just saw the word alien and started fizzing now ufo sightings daily and other sites have reported that samantha did in fact get welcomed to the international space station by an alien craft number four a piece of a space station in 2013 chris cassidy an astronaut for nasa told ground controllers that she had seen a ufo floating near the international space station now this might perk your ears up if you’ve been eagerly awaiting confirmed sightings of ufos but don’t get too excited sure it was a flying object but it was soon identified russian ground controllers identified the ufo as an antenna cover from the zvezda service module of the international space station so it was basically a piece of the station the ufo sighting was mentioned in a space station status report from nasa and there was also a short clip on their youtube channel it posed a low collision hazard because the cover was moving at a slow speed compared to the station however controllers were quite relieved to watch the debris leave the area and fade off into the distance it would have likely entered the atmosphere is nothing more than ash and dust surprisingly this isn’t the first time a piece of the space station has been spotted in space in 1998 the endeavor shuttle was on a mission to link the unity connecting node to the zvezda module an astronaut saw a blobby object nasa confirmed that it was a discarded thermal cover number three black holes i don’t think there will ever be an occasion where black holes aren’t shocking well they’re more interesting than shocking but you’ve probably wondered what they are and what would happen if you were inside one black holes might seem like empty space but they’re not there’s a tremendous amount of matter packed into them like a star 10 times larger than the sun squeezed into a space about the same diameter as new york city according to nasa because of this there’s a powerful gravitational field that stops everything including light from escaping scientists still can’t directly observe black holes even using telescopes that detect light electromagnetic radiation and x-rays instead they study them by observing the effects on matter nearby if a black hole passes through interstellar matter they will know it’s there because it draws that matter inward if a star passes close to a black hole it can literally tear the star apart it’s like a giant space vacuum cleaner scientists think that black holes form from the remnants of large stars that die in supernova explosions even larger ones can also develop from stellar collisions if a neutron star and black hole collide a second black hole can form number two a knocking sound you might assume that go into space would stop people door knocking about your car’s extended warranty but that doesn’t seem to be the case china’s first man in space yang li-wei who took his maiden flight in 2003 recalls hearing someone knocking on the bodywork of his spaceship and said it sounded like someone hitting a wooden hammer against an iron bucket he said it sounded like it didn’t come from inside the spaceship but also didn’t appear to come from outside naturally when you’re in a tin can in space you’re probably gonna be a bit nervous so he peeked outside the porthole to see if he could come up with an answer but there was no one there trying to sell him a vacuum cleaner or a magazine subscription even upon returning to earth jung couldn’t let it go he was never able to figure out what it was nor were experts able to recreate the sound for him to determine what it might have been number one hand of god nasa’s technology picked up something incredibly cool and kind of shocking something that looks like a hand and it’s been nicknamed the hand of god according to nasa it’s a pulsar wind nebula powered by the leftover dense core of a star that blew up in a supernova explosion nasa’s nuclear spectroscopic telescope array known as nustar used high energy x-rays to show the blue part of the image while the chandra x-ray observatory shows the lower energy light in green and red when the technology is combined you see a clearly defined hand but in the new star view the hand shrinks to look more like a fist we can’t say with any certainty that outer space isn’t full of weird and wonderful things i mean just think of how many astronauts have come back with some incredible stories even if we haven’t been able to validate their claims what do you think is hiding in outer space also check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now see you next time