Astronauts and Cosmonauts

astro

We have quotes from 10 Astronauts and cosmonauts about UFOs

\NASA and the CIA instructed the American astronauts to “never use the word UFO upon sighting the UFO (s) while broadcasting or transmitting from outer space. Instead, the code and secret name ‘Santa Claus’ is to be exclusively used upon encountering flying saucers.”
This, was confirmed by the US astronauts in person and in writing.

In any field of investigation eyewitness testimony is invaluable. What better witness to have in a criminal investigation than a police officer, who actually saw the crime committed? It is so with UFO investigation, as well. Astronauts and cosmonauts are chosen and highly trained to observe anything and everything in their environment to prevent possible collisions from space debris and other space equipment. Almost a score of these space travelers have gone on record as having encountered unidentified flying objects during their flights and walks on the Moon. Although NASA and other government agencies have tried, very hard, to keep this from the public, these brave pioneers have stepped forward to tell their story. Here, we present irrefutable proof from the best trained observers in the world of the existence of UFOs. These testimonies, alone, prove the fact that intelligent beings piloting high tech vehicles in close proximity to Earth, positively.

Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev
“It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineered structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away.”
Afanasyev commenting on a UFO sighting that occurred while en route to the Solyut 6 space station in April of 1979.

Buzz Aldrin
NASA: What’s there?
Apollo11: These “Babies” are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn’t believe it! I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there, Lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They’re on the Moon watching us!
Transmission from Apollo 11 on the Moon on July 21, 1969
“Now, obviously, the three of us were not going to blurt out, ‘Hey Houston we got something moving along side of us and we don’t know what it is,’ observed Aldrin. “We weren’t about to do that, cause we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and who knows what somebody would have demanded that we turn back because of Aliens or whatever the reason is, so we didn’t do that but we did decide we’d just cautiously ask Houston where, how far away was the S-IVB? And a few moments we decided that after a while of watching it (UFO), it was time to go to sleep and not to talk about it anymore until we came back and (went through) debriefing.”
Aldrin, commenting after the Apollo 11 flight.

Neil Armstrong
“We have no proof, But if we extrapolate, based on the best information we have available to us, we have to come to the conclusion that … other life probably exists out there and perhaps in many places…”
From a statement in October 1999.
“It was incredible, of course we had always known there was a possibility, the fact is, we were warned off! (by the Aliens). There was never any question then of a space station or a moon city. I can’t go into details, except to say that their ships were far superior to ours both in size and technology – Boy, were they big!…and menacing! No, there is no question of a space station.?
Neil Armstrong on encounters woth extraterrestrial life during the Apollo 11 Monn Landing.

Scott Carpenter
“At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs.”
Carpenter photographed a UFO while in orbit on May 24, 1962. NASA still has not released the photograph.

Eugene Cernan
“…I’ve been asked about UFOs and I’ve said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.”
Cernan commanded the Apollo 17 Mission-The quote is from a 1973 article in the Los Angeles Times.

Colonel L. Gordon Cooper
“I wanted to convey to you my views on our extra-terrestrial visitors popularly referred to as ‘ UFOs,’ and suggest what might be done to properly deal with them.”
“I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth. I feel that we need to have a top level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion. We may first have to show them that we have learned to resolve our problems by peaceful means, rather than warfare, before we are accepted as fully qualified universal team members. This acceptance would have tremendous possibilities of advancing our world in all areas. Certainly then it would seem that the UN has a vested interest in handling this subject properly and expeditiously.
“If the UN agrees to pursue this project, and to lend their credibility to it, perhaps many more well qualified people will agree to step forth and provide help and information.”
Cooper, addressing a UN panel discussion on UFOs and ETs in New York in 1985. The panel was chaired by then Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
“For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public.”
Cooper testifying to a U.N. committee.
“As far as I am concerned, there have been too many unexplained examples of UFO sightings around this Earth for us to rule out the possibilities that some form of life exists out there beyond our own world.”
“I know other astronauts share my feelings, and we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs!”
“We thought they could have been Russian we regularly had MiG-15s overflying our base. We scrambled our Sabre jets to intercept and got to our ceiling of 45,000 feet . . . and they were still way above us traveling faster than we were. These vehicles were in formation like a fighter group, but they were metallic silver and saucer-shaped. Believe me, they weren’t like any MiGs I’d seen before! They had to be UFOs.”
Cooper said he first encountered UFOs as a military pilot in Germany in the early 1950s, when unidentified craft were spotted over an air base.
“I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed! These guys were all pro cameramen, so the picture quality was very good. The camera crew managed to get within 20 or 30 yards of it,filming all the time. It was a classic saucer, shiny silver and smooth, about 30 feet across. It was pretty clear it was an alien craft. As they approached closer it took off.” When his camera crew handed over the film, Cooper followed standard procedure and contacted Washington to report the UFO and “all heck broke loose,” he said. “After a while a high-ranking officer said when the film was developed I was to put it in a pouch and send it to Washington. He didn’t say anything about me not looking at the film. That’s what I did when it came back from the lab and it was all there just like the camera crew reported.” When the Air Force later started Operation Blue Book to collate UFO evidence and reports, Cooper says he mentioned the film evidence. “But the film was never found supposedly. Blue Book was strictly a cover-up anyway.”
In 1957, Cooper was one of an elite band of test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California, in charge of several advanced projects, including the installation of a precision landing system.
“I had a good friend at Roswell, a fellow officer. He had to be careful about what he said. But it sure wasn’t a weather balloon, like the Air Force cover story. He made it clear to me what crashed was a craft of alien origin, and members of the crew were recovered.”
Cooper revealed he’s convinced an alien craft crashed at Roswell, N. Mex., in 1947 and aliens were discovered in the wreckage.
“It started in World War 2, when the government didn’t want people to know about UFO reports in case they panicked,” said Cooper. “They would have been fearful it was superior enemy technology that we had no defense against. Then it got worse in the Cold War for the same reason. So they told one untruth, they had to tell another to cover that one, then another, then another . . . it just snowballed. And right now I’m convinced a lot of very embarrassed government officials are sitting there in Washington trying to figure a way to bring the truth out. They know it’s got to come out one day, and I’m sure it will. America has a right to know!”
A statement when asked why has the government kept its UFO secrets for so many years? Cooper was a Mercury 9 and Gemini-5 astronaut.
“I should point out that I am not an experienced UFO professional researcher. I have not yet had the privilege of flying a UFO, nor of meeting the crew of one. I do feel that I am somewhat qualified to discuss them since I have been into the fringes of the vast areas in which they travel. Also, I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe. They were at a higher altitude than we could reach with our jet fighters of that time.”
“I would also like to point out that most astronauts are very reluctant to even discuss UFOs due to the great numbers of people who have indiscriminately sold fake stories and forged documents abusing their names and reputations without hesitation. Those few astronauts who have continued to have participation in the UFO field have had to do so very cautiously. There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO.
“Several days in a row we sighted groups of metallic, saucer-shaped vehicles at great altitudes over the base, and we tried to get close to them, but they were able to change direction faster than our fighters. I do believe UFOs exist and that the truly unexplained ones are from some other technologically advanced civilization. From my association with aircraft and spacecraft, I think I have a pretty good idea of what everyone on this planet has and their performance capabilities, and I’m sure some of the UFOs at least are not from anywhere on Earth.”
Omni, Vol. 2, No. 6, March 1980.

John Glen
“I believe certain reports of flying saucers to be legitimate.”

Yevegni Khrunov
“Is the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations conceivable? Of course. Before the uniqueness of the earth is demonstrated, this assumption should be taken as quite legitimate. As regards UFOs, their presence cannot be denied: thousands of people have seen them. It may be that their source is optical effects, but some of their properties, for instance, their ability to change course by 90 degrees at great speed, simply stagger the imagination.”
Sputnik, “UFOs Through the Eyes of Cosmonauts,” December 1980. Yevegni Khrunov was the Soyuz-5 spacecraft pilot in 1969.

Major General Vladimir Kovalyonok
“On May 5, 1981, we were in orbit [in the Salyut-6 space station]. I saw an object that didn’t resemble any cosmic objects I’m familiar with. It was a round object which resembled a melon, round and a little bit elongated. In front of this object was something that resembled a gyrating depressed cone. I can draw it, it’s difficult to describe. The object resembles a barbell. I saw it becoming transparent and like with a ‘ body’ inside. At the other end I saw something like gas discharging, like a reactive object. Then something happened that is very difficult for me to describe from the point of view of physics. Last year in the magazine Nature I read about a physicist… we tried together to explain this phenomenon and we decided it was a ‘ plasmaform.’ I have to recognize that it did not have an artificial origin. It was not artificial because an artificial object couldn’t attain this form. I don’t know of anything that can make this movement… tightening, then expanding, pulsating. Then as I was observing, something happened, two explosions. One explosion, and then 0.5 seconds later, the second part exploded. I called my colleague Viktor [Savinykh], but he didn’t arrive in time to see anything.”
“What are the particulars? First conclusion: the object moved in a suborbital path, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see it. There were two clouds, like smoke, that formed a barbell. It came near me and I watched it. Then we entered in to the shade for two or three minutes after this happened. When we came out of the shade we didn’t see anything. But during a certain time, we and the craft were moving together.”
Videotaped interview with Giorgio Bongiovanni in the village of Kosnikov, near Moscow, 1993.

Dr. Jerry Linenger
“In five months in space, I have seen unidentified flying objects for sure. Sometimes I looked out of the window and I could see a metallic thing like a spoon flying methodically.”
Dr. Linenger was a NASA astronaut and during five months in he logged 50 million miles – the equivalent of over 110 round trips to the moon, travelling at an average speed of 18,000 miles per hour. Dr. Linenger was in Dubai to speak at the BurJuman Retail Conference at the Emirates Towers Hotel.

James Lovell
Lovell: Bogey at 10 o’clock high.
Capcom: This is Houston. Say again 7.
Lovell: Said we have a bogey at 10 o’clock high.
Capcom: Gemini 7, is that the booster or is that an actual sighting?
Lovell: We have several…actual sightings.
Capcom: …Estimated distance or size?
Lovell: We also have the booster in sight…
James Lovell in conversation with mission control during his flight on Gemini 7.
“Mission Control, please be informed, there is a Santa Claus.”
James Lovell, who was commander of the ill-fated Apollo-13 mission, made this transmission after coming around the far side of the moon on the Apollo-8 mission on or around Christmas in 1968 with Frank Borman and William Anders. Although it was Christmas time, this statement has caused considerable controversy as “Santa Claus” was apparently a codeword used to indicate a UFO or other unusual sighting.

James McDivitt

“At one stage we even thought it might be necessary to take evasive action to avoid a collision.”
James McDivitt commenting on an orbital encounter he and Ed White had with a “weird object” with arm-like extensions which approached their capsule. Later in the flight they saw two similar objects over the Caribbean.

Edgar D. Mitchell
“We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from?”
From a statement in 1971
“I’ve talked with people of stature-of military and government credentials and position-and heard their stories, and their desire to tell their stories openly to the public. And that got my attention very, very rapidly…. The first hand experiences of these credible witnesses that, now in advanced years are anxious to tell their story, we can’t deny that, and the evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident, and that indeed an alien craft did crash, and that material was recovered from that crash site.”
“The U.S. Government hasn’t maintained secrecy regarding UFOs It’s been leaking out all over the place. But the way it’s been handled is by denial, by denying the truth of the documents that have leaked. By attempting to show them as fraudulent, as bogus of some sort. There has been a very large disinformation and misinformation effort around this whole area. And one must wonder, how better to hide something out in the open than just to say, ‘It isn’t there. You’re deceiving yourself if you think this is true.’ And yet, there it is right in front of you. So it’s a disinformation effort that’s concerning here, not the fact that they have kept the secret. They haven’t kept it. It’s been getting out into the public for fifty years or more.”
“I have been over the years very skeptical like many others. But in the last ten years or so, I have known the late Dr. Alan Hynek, who I highly admire. I know and currently work with Dr. Jacques Vallee. I’ve come to realize that the evidence is building up to make this a valid and researchable question. Further, because my personal motivation has always been to understand our universe better, and my own theoretical work has convinced me that life is everywhere in the universe that has been permitted to evolve, I consider this a very timely question… By becoming more involved with the serious research field, I’ve seen the evidence mount towards the truth of these matters. I rely upon the testimony of contacts that I have had – old timers – who were involved in official positions in government and intelligence and military over the last 50 years. We cannot say that today’s government is really covering it up – I think that most of them don’t know what is going on anymore than the public…”
From an interview with MSN 1998.
“The evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident and that indeed an alien craft did crash and that material was recovered from that crash site,” says Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission. Mitchell doesn’t say he’s seen a UFO. But he says he’s met with high-ranking military officers who admitted involvement with alien technology and hardware.
Captain Mitchell was an Apollo 14 Astronaut.

Storey Musgrove
“Statistically it’s a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they’re so advanced they’re even doing interstellar travel. I believe it’s possible they even came here.”
“I try to communicate with the life that’s out there. I’m serious. It is not that far out. When I’m circling around out there, I try in whatever ways I can to get them to come down here and get me.”
The Houston Post, December 1, 1993. Story Musgrave was the Space Shuttle astronaut who flew on the repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dr. Brian O’leary
“We have contact with alien cultures.”

Major General Pavel Popovich
“Today it can be stated with a high degree of confidence that observed manifestations of UFOs are no longer confined to the modern picture of the world… The historical evidence of the phenomenon… allows us to hypothesize that ever since mankind has been co-existing with this extraordinary substance, it has manifested a high level of intelligence and technology. The UFO sightings have become the constant component of human activity and require a serious global study… The scientific study of the UFO phenomenon should take place in the midst of other sciences dealing with man and the world.”
Popovich, P., MUFON 1992 International Symposium Proceedings.
“The influence the UFO has on people, as well as the effects it produces, should become the items of special research. The UFO’s interaction with the environment, the behavior that it motivates, and its genesis, also present interesting areas for concentrated study. Today, many specialists have come to the opinion that [UFO] phenomenon research should be taken up along with understanding and comprehension of other unexplained phenomena… The development of new approaches for the identification and study of energy and information processes will allow for an enthusiastic move toward the comprehension of the phenomenon. The results of these studies should aid the survival of the people on earth…
“It’s necessary to carry out the popular ufological enlightenment, since the probability for a meeting of a person with a UFO exists, and this person should be ready for this event. Precautionary measures are especially important. It’s necessary to tell the truth, which has been distorted previously by the politically engaged sciences and most recently by ufological dilettantes. The main purpose of the primary local groups, that of controlling the ufological situation, mustn’t be forgotten. The ufologists should know all the UFO’s landing places and contacts in their regions. They should have relations with the local authorities, and in particular, with the police, the civil defense bodies, as well as information, scientific, and medical organizations.”
Popovich, P., “Ufology in the Commonwealth of Independent States: Organization Problems,” in the MUFON 1992 International UFO Symposium Proceedings. Major General Popovich was a pioneer Cosmonaut, “Hero of the Soviet Union”, and President of All-Union Ufology Association of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Donald Slayton
“I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high. As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn’t look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disk. About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going way from me-and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared.”
Donald Slayton, Mercury astronaut, in a 1951 interview.

Joseph Albert Walker
“I don’t feel like speculating about them. All I know is what appeared on the film which was developed after the flight.”
Joseph Walker from May 11, 1962 commenting during a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washington after he had filmed five or six UFOs, (he stated one his tasks was to detect UFOs), during his record breaking fifty-mile-high flight in April, 1962 while piloting an X-15.

Major Robert White
“There ARE things out there! There absolutely is!”
White exclaiming over the radio about a UFO encounter taking place on a 58 mile high X-15 flight on July 17, 1962.
“I have no idea what it could be. It was greyish in color and about thirty to forty feet away.”
Major Robert White, on July 17, 1962 during his fifty-eight-mile high flight of an X-15.

Al Worden
“And a literal translation describes very clearly a spacecraft with the ability to land vertically and take-off vertically, and it was an object that looked very much like the Lunar Module that we used on the Moon; and if it’s going to land vertically and take-off vertically, it had to come from some place and go back some place.”
Worden discussed his views that Earth was probably visited in the past by extraterrestrial explorers. He began by commenting on the well known “UFO interpretation” of the vision of the prophet Ezekiel in the Bible.
“In my mind the universe has to be cyclic, so that in one galaxy if there is a planet maybe that has arrived at the point of becoming unlivable, you will find in another part of a different galaxy a planet that has just formed which is perfect for habitation. I see some kind of intelligent being, like us, skipping around the universe from planet to planet as, let’s say, the South Pacific Indians do on the islands, where they skip from island to island. When the first island blows up due to a volcano, they will have their progeny on all these other islands and they will be able to continue the species. I think that’s what the [alien] space program is all about.
“I think we may be a combination of creatures that were living here on Earth some time in the past, and having a visitation, if you will, by creatures from somewhere else in the universe, and those two species getting together and having progeny. I am not at all convinced that we are not the result of that particular union some many thousands of years ago. If that is the case in fact, a very small group of explorers could land on a planet and create successors to themselves that would eventually take up the pursuit of, let’s say, inhabiting the rest of the universe.”
Excerpts from his interview in the documentary “The Other Side of the Moon,” produced by Michael G. Lemle, and broadcast by PBS in July 1989. Al Worden was an Apollo 15 astronaut who later became a poet.

Unidentified Cosmonauts
Female Cosmonaut: “I’ll take it and hold it with my right hand. Look out the peephole! I have it!” Male Cosmonaut: “There is something! If we do not get out the world will never know about this!”
From the final transmission of a pair of Cosmonauts whose scheduled seven-day mission was interrupted by a malfunction of unknown origins. This piece of conversation was recorded on February 24, 1961 while they were trying to repair the damage. The two Cosmonauts were never heard from again. UFO comments by the world’s top military leaders