One such incident was mentioned in an article in Fate magazine, and was apparently brought to light through a dossier from the archives of the old Soviet Ministry of Defense, as well as a document called “Thread-3”, which were all acquired by journalist George Knapp in 1992 year. Documents abound with all sorts of strange UFO encounters, and one of them was survived on June 17, 1978 by cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalenko and Alexander Ivanchenko. On this day, the object was seen flying under the space station and somewhat matched their speed, as if he was watching them.
Then Kovelyanok would tell his dispatch center about this:
– On the right, at an angle of 30 degrees, there is an object flying under us. It is something very similar to a tennis ball, as bright as a flashing star. Its speed is lower than ours.
Kovalenok once again collided with a UFO aboard Salyut-6 in May 1981 when he saw an object near the space station that seemed to pulsate and move erratically, as if it were following them. He talks about what he saw in an interview with Italian reporter Giorgio Bongiovanni:
– On May 5, 1981, we were in orbit in Salyut-6. I saw an object that was not similar to any of the space objects known to me. It was a round, melon-like object, round and slightly elongated. In front of this object was something that looked like a rotating depressed cone, I can draw it, it’s hard to describe. The object resembles a barbell.
– I saw how it becomes transparent and as if with a “body” inside. At the other end, I saw something like a gas discharge, something like a reactive object. Then something happened that is very difficult for me to describe from the point of view of physics. I must admit that she was not artificial. It was not artificial, because an artificial object could not reach this shape. I don’t know of anything that can cause this movement … to contract, then expand, pulsate. Then, while I was watching, something happened, two explosions. One explosion, and then after 0.5 seconds the second part exploded. I called my colleague Viktor [Savinykh], but he didn’t have time to see anything.
– What are these features? First conclusion: the object was moving along a suborbital trajectory, otherwise I would not be able to see it. There were two clouds like smoke that formed the bar. He came very close, and I began to watch him. We then entered the shadow for two or three minutes after this happened. When we came out of the shadows, we saw nothing. But for a certain time, we and the UFO moved together.
Another curious incident with Salyut-6 occurred in 1980 and was witnessed by cosmonauts Valery Ryumin and Leonid Popov. Astronauts at the time claimed to have observed “a cluster of white, shining spots” flying into space from the Moscow region, and even received photographic evidence of this. It seems that this report was completely classified by the Russian authorities, and only in 1991, when the newspaper “Rabochaya Tribuna” published a full report on it, which was then picked up by the External Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS), which will write:
– Chief Engineer of the Cosmonaut Training Center Vladimir Alexandrov brought the photograph of the UFO to the editorial office of the Rabochaya Tribune magazine. Aleksandrov claimed that the flying object is depicted in the photograph, which was published on February 28. on the night of June 14-15, 1980, cosmonauts Valery Ryumin and Leonid Popov announced the appearance of a UFO on the air of a Russian TV channel.
– Aleksandrov claimed that at that time the cosmonauts’ report was hushed up, but now he told what actually happened that night when the cosmonauts were in orbit. He said that a cluster of white, shining spots began to rise into space from the Moscow region and actually took off higher than the spacecraft of the Salyut-6 cosmonauts, according to Ryumin and Popov. The UFO was seen around midnight.
– Unfortunately, or perhaps convenient for some, the Photo mentioned here has somehow disappeared. For their part, the Russian authorities insist that this was just a standard satellite launch, but wouldn’t the two cosmonauts know about this if it were true?
Strange experiences like this will haunt astronauts right up to the next stage of the Salyut program. In April 1982, the Soviet Union launched its ambitious Salyut-7 space station as part of the Soviet Salyut program, which began in 1971 with the goal of eventually sending a total of four crewed research stations into space and two military reconnaissance stations with a crew. Salyut-7, the last launched under the program and the predecessor of the Mir space station, became the 10th space station ever put into orbit by mankind, and was conceived as a kind of test of a new system of modular space stations, which included the possibility of connecting new modules for expanding the station or adapting it to any necessary functions, as well as an outpost for various extraterrestrial experiments. Ultimately, Salyut-7 will remain in orbit for a total of 8 years and 10 months, which until then was the longest time that such a station had ever remained in continuous orbit. He is also known for a very strange series of strange, unexplained events that the crew members witnessed.
In July 1984, Salyut-7 was on the 155th day of flight, and everything went on as usual until the cosmonaut commander Oleg Atkov, Vladimir Soloviev and Leonid Kizim reported that the space station was suddenly surrounded by an oppressive, dazzling orange light … The crew of three on board the Salyut-7 all then allegedly looked out of the windows to try to see what caused this inexplicable bright glow. At this moment, they will witness, probably, the last thing they expected to see there.
There, in the space in front of the space station, hovered what the crew described as seven huge winged humanoid creatures, estimated to be about 30 meters tall and with calm, smiling faces, and it was from these strange creatures that the etheric light seemed to emanate.
They also argued that the creatures exuded a sense of calm and serenity, and, oddly enough, the astronauts did not feel any fear during the meeting, only surprise. According to eyewitnesses, the colossal creatures they called “angels” matched the speed of the space station, staying in the same position for about 10 minutes before disappearing.
Confused by what they had just seen, the three astronauts argued heatedly about what kind of creatures they were and what rational explanation might explain it, but they could not come up with anything. In the end, although they all saw exactly the same thing, they attributed it to the stress and hardships of being in space.
They could continue to convince themselves forever that it was some kind of massive hallucination and an attack of temporary insanity, but this was not their last meeting with these otherworldly beings.
On the 167th day of the flight, Salyut received three additional cosmonauts in the person of Svetlana Savitskaya, Igor Volkov and Vladimir Dzhanibekov. Shortly after these new crew members boarded, the station was once again flooded with powerful blinding light, and this time all six crew members looked out the windows to see several massive angelic beings floating in the blackness of space outside, again with their benevolent smiling faces.
Given that they were all seeing the same thing this time, it seemed like there was more to the simple hallucinations. UFO or something else?
– Who knows? Be that as it may, the “Space Angels” from “Salyut-7” still remain one of the strangest encounters reported by cosmonauts.
After Salyut-7, perhaps the most famous of the Russian space stations, Mir, appeared. Originally launched in 1986, it was a LEO station that was the first actually assembled in orbit, finally completed in 1996. At one time, it was the largest artificial satellite ever used, and for some time held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space – 3,644 days. It was supposed to be the next stage in the development of space stations, and so it was until it was ultimately surpassed by the International Space Station (ISS). Of course, it also had its share of weirdness reported by its crew.
According to some reports, the crew of the “mira” saw UFOs all the time, and one such strange observation was reported by cosmonauts Gennady Manakov and Gennady Strekalov. According to them, on September 27, 1990, they saw a huge silvery ball in orbit over the Earth’s North Pole region, and in a radio interview, Manakov would say so in this transcript provided by the foreign broadcast information service:
Question: “Tell me, what are the most interesting natural phenomena you see on Earth?”
Astronaut: “Yesterday, for example, I saw, so to speak, an unidentified flying object. I call it that.”
The question “What was that?”
Astronaut: “Well, I don’t know. It was a large silvery sphere, it was iridescent … it was at 10:50 pm …”
The question “was it over the Newfoundland area?”
Astronaut: “No. We already flew over Newfoundland. There was an absolutely clear, clear sky. It is difficult to determine, but the object was at a great height above the Earth, perhaps 20-30 kilometers. It was much larger than a huge ship.”
The question “maybe it was an iceberg?”
Astronaut: “No. This object had the correct shape, but what it was – I don’t know. Perhaps a huge experimental sphere or something else. I watched it for about six or seven seconds, and then it disappeared. It just hovered over earth!
In March 1993, a real survey of a UFO hiding near the Mir orbital station was made, filmed by cosmonaut Musa Manarov. He took these shots by accident as he was filming the approach of an incoming cargo flight that was supposed to dock with them, and they show some kind of flickering, almost cylindrical object in space.
There are, of course, other reports from astronauts who have been aboard these space stations for decades, but it is remarkable how well they were concealed, and in some cases completely erased. Getting any kind of UFO reports from the Cold War era, or even just from Soviet or Russian files in general, seems like an almost hopeless endeavor, given the secrecy that has been thrown at it all.
Are all these messages, as the Russian authorities would like to believe, simply misleading definitions of space debris, launches and other atmospheric phenomena, or is there something else in all of this? Wouldn’t trained astronauts know if what they saw was something earthly in nature? How can we explain such messages that we have reviewed here? One has to think that this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, and no matter what one thinks about all this, it seems that something strange is happening in space.
