Astronauts Expose The Most Shocking Sights Witnessed In Space

What's out there? There are countless questions surrounding the cosmos and extraterrestrials, and it seems like NASA and the U.S. government haven't always been perfectly honest about these topics. Thankfully, a number of well-traveled astronauts have shared some of their most unusual celestial experiences with the public — and sometimes without official permission.

1. Ghostly green light

Many astronauts have encountered similar unexplained phenomena while in orbit. Back in 1963, Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. became one of the first Americans to venture into space, but when he got back to Earth, it wasn't what he'd done that brought him notoriety — rather, it was what he saw.

Unexplained apparition

Cooper reportedly claimed to have observed a circular object emitting green light speeding towards his ship. Fortunately, it didn’t make any contact. But what was it? To this day, the apparition remains unexplained.

2. Clouds of smoke

In 2004 Russian news website Pravda.ru published some eye-catching claims from the cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok. He had spent a total of 217 days in space – including time aboard Soviet Union space stations. The astronaut told the news website, “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. It was hard to determine the size and the speed of an object in space.”

UFO explosion

Kovalyonok continued, “That is why I cannot say exactly [what] size it actually was. [My colleague] 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.” And Kovalyonok was certain of what he’d seen, adding, “It was probably a UFO, but it was definitely not mysticism – two people watched it at the same time.”