The UFO Phenomenon

NASA astronaut's 1965 UFO sighting was solved many years later

By T.K. Randall
July 8, 2024

Image: Astronaut Edward H. White II During the Gemini 4 Mission
Credit: James McDivitt / (PD) NASA When it comes to UFO sightings, it is often said that astronauts and pilots make particularly good witnesses thanks to their stellar reputation, attention to detail and no-nonsense approach.

When astronaut Jim McDivitt spotted a strange object during his flight into space aboard NASA's Gemini 4 mission all the way back in 1965, therefore, people understandably took notice.

"At the time I saw it, I said there was something out in front of me or outside the spacecraft that I couldn't identify and I never have been able to identify it, and I don't think anybody ever will," he said during a television interview around 10 years after the sighting.

"We were in drifting flight and my partner, Ed White, was asleep. I couldn't see anything out in front of me except just the black sky."

"And it was rotating around, I noticed something out in front that was a white cylindrical shape with a white pole sticking it out of one corner of it - it looked like a beer can with a smooth pencil sticking out. I grabbed two cameras and took pictures of it.""As the sun shone on the window, I could no longer see out and the thing just disappeared."

The photos he took ended up inconclusive and blurry and did not seem to help solve the mystery.

It wasn't until years later that McDivitt finally learned what he had seen that day.

"And really what it was, was a reflection of the bolts in the windows," he said in 1999.

"The windows were made up of about three or four or five panes of glass, so that if one got broken we still had some pressure integrity."

"And these little things, when the Sun shined on them right, they'd multiply the images off the different panes. And I'm quite sure that that's what this thing was."

Source: Mirror.co.uk

Tags: UFO, Astronaut