The UFO Phenomenon

Former Mir astronaut recalls UFO sightings

By T.K. Randall
October 23, 2019

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) A former Captain in the United States Navy Medical Corps, Linenger spent a total of 132 days aboard the Russian space station Mir as part of the STS-81 mission in 1997.

In a recent interview, he recalled some of the strange things that he saw during that time.

"Well I'm going to stick my neck out, but how many people think I saw a UFO when I was up there ?" he said. "Well I did, I saw things in the true sense of the word, unidentified flying objects - don't take me out of context there - no aliens."

"But I saw stuff that made me call my crewmates over and say 'what the heck is that?'"The first astronaut ever to conduct a spacewalk outside a foreign space station, Linenger was joined by two Russian cosmonauts during his time on Mir.

On several occasions the crew would spot something unusual out in space but were unable to determine if they were looking at a large object in the distance or a small object that was just outside.

"Is it something 100,000 miles away that's the size of a big spacecraft ?" he said. "It's very hard to distinguish that, usually it was something you could kind of explain, maybe an external tank or something like that. But you would see things and you go 'wow, that's cool - I don't know what that was exactly, but it's not a satellite'."

"You definitely, just like when you see something weird [on Earth], call everyone over like 'I don't care what you're doing, get over here and take a look at this.'"

Source: IB Times

Tags: Jerry Linenger, Astronaut