Random Weirdest Things Astronauts Have Seen In Space (14 items)

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  (#7) Leroy Chiao Saw Some Creepy Lights Zoom Past Him

  Leroy Chiao commanded the International Space Station in 2005. While on a spacewalk, Chiao saw white lights aligned in an upside-down check formation whiz right past him. Some people have posited that a string of fishing boats along the South American coast could explain what he saw, but Chiao was 230 miles above Earth when this happened. Those would have to be some seriously strong boat spotlights to be seen from all the way up there.

  Chiao told HuffPost, "I'm skeptical of claims that we've been visited by aliens from another planet or other dimension, but I don't rule it out 100 percent."
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  (#2) Neil Armstrong May Have Seen A UFO Parking Lot

  Neil Armstrong, besides strolling around the moon and saying some famous words, may have seen some gigantic UFOs in space. According to a source no less dubious than Aliens and Man: A Synopsis of Facts and Beliefs, Armstrong is rumored to have sent a secret message to NASA during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Armstrong allegedly said: "These babies were huge, sir! Enormous! Oh, God! You wouldn't believe it! ... I'm telling you there are other spacecraft out here ... lined up on the far side of the crater's edge! ... They're on the moon watching us!" 

  It's one of many, many such tales associated with the first lunar landing. Armstrong was notoriously tight-lipped about his experiences in space and never commented on this rumor, likely because there simply wasn't much factual basis for the claims that he ever saw or said any such things.
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  (#10) Multiple Astronauts Saw Dazzling Light Shows

  During the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts reported seeing "light flashes" in their eyes. The crews of Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 were warned about this and reported that they also saw strange bursts of light, even when their eyes were closed. Experiments were conducted on the next four Apollo missions to try and figure out what was causing these weird visions.

  NASA determined that the astronauts were seeing cosmic rays. We don't see cosmic rays here on Earth because they are absorbed by our atmosphere, but without that barrier in space, astronauts were seeing something no one had ever seen before.
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  (#11) James McDivitt Saw Something He Couldn't Explain

  While on the Gemini 4 mission in 1965, astronaut James McDivitt thought he saw a UFO. In an interview with NASA, McDivitt explained:

  I looked outside, just glanced up, and there was something out there. It had a geometrical shape similar to a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it. That relative size, dimensionally. It was all white.

  The press got a hold of the story and ran with it, claiming McDivitt had seen a UFO. It wasn't until years later, after reviewing a photograph he had never seen before, that McDivitt realized what it was: a reflection of some bolts in the window glass.

  He said:

  I went back and then I saw what the thing was. And really what it was, was a reflection of the bolts in the windows. 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.

  Or maybe that's just what NASA told him to say. 
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  (#3) Yang Liwei Heard A Mysterious Knock Outside His Ship

  In 2003, Yang Liwei became the first astronaut sent into space by the Chinese space program. He's said he heard "someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer" on his maiden flight. He looked outside of the ship's porthole but was unable to find the source of the knocking. Considering space is a vacuum, it was even weirder that he heard a sound from outside the ship. 

  Liwei is not alone in this discovery, either; other Chinese astronauts heard the sound on missions in 2005 and 2008.
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  (#4) Vladimir Kovalyonok May Have Watched A UFO Explode

  Maj. Gen. Vladimir Kovalyonok was part of a crew manning Salyut VI space station in 1981. "When I was working at the Salyut orbital station, I saw something strange in a porthole one day. The object was the size of a finger. I was surprised to see it was an orbiting object," said Kovalyonok.

  He added:

  It was hard to determine the size and the speed of an object in space. That is why I can not say exactly, which size it actually was. [My partner Viktor] Savinykh prepared to take a picture of it, but the UFO suddenly exploded. Only clouds of smoke were left. The object split into two interconnected pieces. It was reminiscent of a dumbbell. I reported about it to the Mission Control immediately.

  Kovalyonok is one of the few astronauts to see something inexplicable in space and talk openly about it afterward. 

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