All language subtitles for NASAs.Unexplained.Files.S01E01.Pilot.1080p.WEB.x264-CRiMSON

Narrator: In more than half
a century of space exploration,

NASA has captured images

of some of the most
extraordinary things

in the universe --

desolate planets...

Giant solar flares...

and distant nebulae.

But they've also captured
remarkable images

closer to home...

...objects which seem to defy
explanation,

flying just outside
earth's atmosphere.

Man: We see a couple
of star-like things.

Narrator:
Senior NASA astronauts

remain disturbed
by the phenomena they've seen.

I do not know
what that thing was,

and I don't know
what it is today.

Narrator: Can these sightings
be explained?

It's my conclusion

that we're looking at
some kind of spacecraft.

People see things
at the limits of their visions

and fill in
the rest of the details

from their imaginations
or from their fears.

Narrator:
Is there now evidence

of advanced
extraterrestrial life?

Billions of planetary creatures
that have left their planet...

...and they're visiting
other solar systems.

I am very certain of our
visitation by external species.

Narrator:
Incredible official footage.

One thing we can say
about this NASA footage

is it's unimpeachable.

Narrator: The greatest missions
of all time.

We reveal NASA's
strangest encounters in space.

NASAs.Unexplained.Files.S01E01.Pilot.1080p.WEB.x264-CRiMSON
Sync and Corrections - UF
English SRT Subtitles - UF (v1.01)

John Glenn prepares
for a historic mission.

He'll be the first American
to orbit earth.

Man: Glenn prepares
to go to the 11th deck

as clocks point to 6:00 A.M.,
eastern standard time.

Narrator: NASA deliberately
picked a world war ii hero

known for performing
under extreme pressure.

At 11:03 A.M., Glenn
steps onto the rocket platform.

Man:
The seconds tick off,

as his rendezvous with space
approaches.

I'm sure John Glenn had
some butterflies in his stomach

while he was sitting
on the launch pad,

waiting to launch
on friendship 7.

Glenn:
Affirmative, man.

Bleakley:
The atlas booster rocket

hadn't had a very successful
gestation period.

There had been some
very violent accidents with it.

Narrator:
In spite of this,

Glenn is ready
to put his life on the line.

Man:
Godspeed, John Glenn.

[ Radio chatter ]

Glenn: Roger --
zero g, and I feel fine.

Capsule is turning around.

Narrator:
Just five minutes after launch,

Glenn reaches orbit.

Glenn:
Oh, that view is tremendous.

But then Glenn witnesses
something totally unexpected.

Hazy, darting lights
surround his capsule.

A mass of them
envelop the craft.

Glenn:
I never saw anything like it.

They're coming by the capsule,
and they look like little stars,

a whole shower of them
coming by.

They swirl around the capsule
and go in front of the window,

and they're all
brilliantly lighted.

Bleakley: John Glenn
saw some small objects

out his window
of his spacecraft,

and he called them
the fireflies.

He never figured out
what they were,

and neither did anyone else.

Narrator: After the stress
of such a dangerous launch,

could Glenn have imagined
these so-called fireflies?

Space historian James oberg
thinks this is unlikely.

The early astronauts, the main
thing they were able to do

was to think straight
when under pressure.

They wouldn't freeze up.
They wouldn't panic.

They had a special kind
of attitude

toward getting through danger.

Narrator: So if he wasn't
imagining them, what were they?

Fellow astronaut story musgrave
has witnessed something similar

and thinks
they are particles of ice.

Musgrave: They have
thousands of pieces of ice.

It is gorgeously beautiful.

It gets even more beautiful
when they get further out

'cause they're rotating.

Now they're fireflies,
and they turn on and off.

Narrator:
Today, most experts

agree with musgrave's
explanation,

but Glenn was at the dawn of
a new era of human exploration,

where every launch
was a journey into the unknown.

Looking for signs of alien life
may seem strange,

but most scientists today
believe it is highly likely

that life does exist
elsewhere in the universe.

There must be, because we're
finding more and more planets --

1,500 planets now,
just recently.

So to think that no life
has evolved on those planets,

that we're all alone
in the universe

just is almost preposterous.

It's like going back to thinking

that the earth
is the center of the universe.

We found life living

in all sorts of environments
here on earth.

We're even
beginning to find planets

that are sort of like the earth.

So all these signs,
all these arrows

are pointing
in the same direction,

namely that there probably is
life out there.

Narrator:
Some astronomers believe

our own galaxy, the milky way,

contains billions of
potentially habitable planets.

And this is only a tiny fraction
of the known universe.

One photograph, one
of the deep fields of hubble,

is roughly 300 trillion stars.

That's a big number.

That's only one --
one deep field.

Even where we said, "we'll aim
it where there's nothing,"

well, it turns out
another 1,000, 2,000 galaxies.

Narrator: Many believe

that these literally
astronomical numbers...

Mean the existence of alien life
is a near certainty.

Shostak:
The number of planets

in the part of the universe
we can see

is roughly comparable
to the number of grains of sand

on all the beaches of the earth.

Well, the bottom line
is very simple --

with such enormous amount
of cosmic real estate,

it seems so improbable
that we could be alone.

Narrator:
Aboard Gemini iv,

astronaut ed white begins
America's first spacewalk.

White: Okay, I'm out.

Narrator:
Command pilot James mcdivitt

watches from inside the capsule.

White:
I feel like a million dollars.

Narrator:
The next day, ed white sleeps

while Gemini passes over
the pacific ocean.

Suddenly, mcdivitt notices
an object outside their craft.

An official communication log

records mcdivitt's conversation
with Houston.

Back on earth, NASA

and NORAD, the north American
aerospace defense command,

attempt to identify
the sighting.

The closest man-made object
they locate

is 1,200 Miles away.

Nick pope was an official
ufo investigator

for the British
ministry of defense.

He has studied
thousands of sightings,

dating back over 50 years.

There wasn't a discrepancy

between what James mcdivitt
saw and reported

and what NORAD was suggesting
that he had actually seen.

Narrator:
Some observers believe

that the object
was part of the Gemini craft.

McDivitt disagrees.

McDivitt now still says
it was not his own booster.

He said he saw it,
and he says it was not.

Narrator:
Journalists speculate

that mcdivitt saw
a secret spy satellite.

We know at the time,
in the mid '60s,

that there were satellites
being launched

that were not announced,

and it's reasonable to suspect

that someone might launch a
satellite and make it stealthy.

So you never could be sure
what was out there.

Narrator:
But NASA confirmed

no secret satellites
were in the area.

On June 7th, the Gemini capsule
lands in the Atlantic ocean.

Officials remove mcdivitt's film
from the craft,

and it takes four days
to process the images.

And when they are released,

mcdivitt says they are not
of the object he witnessed.

Oberg: I've seen
the original flight film.

It's pretty clear
that he did not capture

what it was he was seeing there.

But what it could have been
was a real mystery.

Narrator: To this day, it
is not known what mcdivitt saw.

Shostak: The idea behind this
is very simple.

You tune over as wide a range
of the radio dial as you can,

looking for a signal.

Finding evidence
of another intelligent species

would change the future history
of our species forever.

[ Beeping ]

Narrator: Seth shostak
is senior astronomer at SETI,

the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence.

He is one of many scientists

actively trying to find
signs of alien life

elsewhere in the universe.

Shostak: Finding evidence
of another intelligent species

would change the future history
of our species forever.

Narrator:
SETI's radio observatory

is based near lassen
national forest, California.

Shostak: Hey,
this is a beautiful place --

I love coming up here --
but it is kind of isolated.

But, of course,
that's why it's here, right?

You want to get away from what's
called man-made interference.

Narrator: Day after day,

shostak and his colleagues
scour the skies,

searching for a signal
from space.

Shostak: The idea behind this
is very simple --

you point these things

in the direction
of some nearby star system,

preferably one that you know
has planets, right?

And then you tune over

as wide a range
of the radio dial as you can,

looking for a signal.

Because if you pick up a signal,

you know they're smart enough
to build a radio transmitter.

Narrator:
Each year, scientists discover

more and more planets
outside of our solar system,

and shostak believes

we're on the verge
of hearing from one of them.

Shostak: The technology
for finding something

doubles in capability
every two years or so.

Personally, I'm very optimistic
that we will book success

within
the next couple of decades.

Narrator:
It's the start of the mission

for Frank borman and Jim lovell,

who will later command
the fateful Apollo 13 mission.

Under two hours
into their voyage,

the astronauts notice something
outside their craft.

Official audio recordings
from the mission

confirm the sighting.

Jim lovell, a former Navy pilot,
uses the term "bogey,"

a way of describing
an enemy aircraft.

Borman later claims

that the bogey
was the craft's own booster.

But official transcripts
taken during the mission

suggest a different
interpretation.

Officials ask...

Lovell responds...

And...

Nick redfern is an author
and ufo investigator.

He jumped on this discrepancy.

But what was interesting
is that there were reports --

"well, we can see the booster,"
you know,

so clearly the booster
couldn't be

in two places at the same time.

There was obviously
something else going on.

Narrator: Nick pope also doubts
that the astronauts

could have mistaken the booster
for another object.

Astronauts arguably make
about the best you can get,

in terms of their observation,
their reliability.

Redfern: This inevitably
raised the question,

"was it a ufo
in the terms of a flying saucer,

"or was it a ufo in the terms

it was just something in the sky
that wasn't identified?"

Narrator:
Some space experts claim

that the bogey was part
of a larger cluster of debris,

but pope remains unconvinced.

Now, some people say they were
just parts of the booster rocket

falling away from the craft.

The real answer is,
we just don't know.

Narrator:
Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon

prepare for America's 17th
manned space mission.

[ Radio chatter ]

Their first challenge
after launch

is to dock
with another spacecraft.

Man: Roger.
You're go for docking.

Traveling
at 17,000 Miles per hour,

the astronauts complete
the hugely demanding operation

on their first attempt.

Man #2: We are docked.

Man #3: We confirm
they're docked, flight.

Roger.

Roger. Outstanding.

Narrator:
The following day,

the astronauts see something
outside Gemini xi

that they cannot identify...

...a bright object that seems to
change shape before their eyes.

The crew noticed something
bright coming toward them.

They reached for cameras,

took some pictures of something
going past their windows.

Narrator: Again, officials
try to identify the sighting.

They claim
that the nearest man-made object

is a Russian satellite
orbiting 280 Miles away.

Bruce maccabee, an optical
physicist for the U.S. Navy,

investigated the sighting.

Given the focal length
of the camera used on the craft

and the size
of the image in the picture,

he concluded
it could not possibly be

the Russian satellite.

Maccabee:
I did some basic calculations.

The satellite must have been
thousands of feet in size.

Narrator: Maccabee's suspicions
were confirmed

when he double-checked
the tracking data.

The satellite, it seemed, was
3,000 Miles away from Gemini xi,

not 280.

Maccabee:
There was a big discrepancy

between what
the calculations showed

and the original identification.

This meant that they were not
seeing the proton 3 satellite.

What they did see
is up for grabs.

Narrator: For maccabee,
after 40 years of investigation,

the encounter remains a mystery.

It becomes what I call a truly
unidentified flying object

if, after
a careful investigation,

it still remains unexplained.

Musgrave:
I think there are millions

or hundreds of millions,

possibly billions
of planetary creatures

that have left their planet,

and they're visiting
other solar systems.

Narrator:
How would aliens get to earth?

The nearest
potentially habitable planets

are light-years away.

Humans are unable to travel
galactic distances,

but alien life-forms
may not be bound

by our technological
constraints.

Keep in mind that the universe

is about three times
as old as the earth,

so we're really
the new kids on the block.

Musgrave: If some advanced
evolutionary strain

got their act together,

they could have been developing
technology

for a million years
or a billion years.

Narrator: Our understanding of
the universe is in its infancy.

Some astrophysicists believe

it may be possible
to travel between galaxies.

Dr. kasher:
Space can be warped or bent

so an intense gravitational
field can warp space.

And if another civilization
can warp space enough,

they wouldn't have to travel
all that distance.

They could bend it
and then just jump over.

Musgrave:
So I think there are millions

or hundreds of millions,

possibly billions
of planetary creatures

that have left their planet,

and they're visiting
other solar systems.

Narrator:
Aboard Apollo 11,

Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins,
and buzz aldrin

prepare for mankind's
greatest mission --

to land and walk on the moon.

Man:
We are still go with Apollo 11.

Narrator:
1 million people gather

at the biggest show in history.

Man:
Astronauts report it feels good.

T-minus 15 seconds.
Guidance is internal.

12, 11, 10, 9...

Narrator: At 9:31 A.M.,
the engines ignite

on the most powerful
launch vehicle ever built.

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan bean
describes the experience.

The thought
that ran through my head was,

"i hope the metal
in this spaceship

is strong enough
to withstand this vibration."

Man: Liftoff!
We have a liftoff!

Bean:
It is more than I ever imagined

machinery could stand
and still operate.

Man: Tower clear.

Man #2:
Apollo 11, this is Houston.

You are go for staging, over.

Narrator: 12 minutes later,
the crew reach orbit.

I looked for the wire
that is holding this earth up

for a second.

See, you can't suddenly change

from an earthling
to a spaceling.

You just can't do it.

Narrator:
Millions of people worldwide

watch the mission unfold.

Man: 11, you got
a pretty big audience.

It's live in the U.S.

It's going live to Japan,
Western Europe,

and much of South America.

Narrator:
Three days into their mission,

the astronauts
see a flashing object.

Armstrong immediately
radios down to mission control.

Dr. kasher:
They're not gonna radio back
that they've seen something

unless it's something
they really can't explain.

Narrator:
The s-ivb Armstrong refers to

is a large section
of the saturn v rocket.

NASA guys said that
their tracking data suggested

it was about 6,000 Miles away,

which would have been
difficult for them to see.

Narrator:
The astronauts know

they can't announce
what they're seeing

to millions of people on earth.

The astronauts are very highly
trained and are national heroes,

and you might expect

that they would feel a little
reluctance to talk about ufos

and to feel some pressure
not to do that.

Narrator: The crew
make no additional reports

on the sighting
during the mission.

Oberg:
Alternately, they reported

that he did not
tell Houston about this

because he didn't want to create
some kind of ufo flap.

Narrator: The sighting
remains unexplained.

Pope: Governments
are inherently secretive.

Add to that the taboo about
reporting and discussing ufos,

and you have
the public perception

that governments know something
and they're hiding something.

[ Radio chatter ]

Narrator:
Throughout the 1960s,

as the number of missions
increased,

so did the number of sightings
of unidentified objects.

When ufo sightings first began
in the United States,

the air force was handed
a problem of

"what do we do with it?"

It looked like there was things
flying around

that the air force
couldn't control.

Narrator: In an attempt to deal
with the issue, in 1968,

the U.S. air force commissioned
a full investigation,

called the condon report.

Despite several
significant discrepancies

between the astronauts' accounts
and official explanations,

the report concludes...

Condon report was definitely

an attempt to discourage
public discussion of this.

It was a cover-up.

Governments
are inherently secretive.

Add to that the taboo about
reporting and discussing ufos,

and you have
the public perception

that governments know something
and they're hiding something.

[ Bell tolls ]

Narrator:
Unlike the United States,

the British government employed

an official ufo-investigation
unit for over 50 years.

This is an official report
from a senior military officer

talking about a landed ufo.

Narrator:
Nick pope worked there

before it was suddenly shut down
in 2009.

Pope: Before I began that job
at the ministry of defence,

I was extremely skeptical
about ufos,

but I came out of that post

believing that it was possible
that we were being visited.

In the ministry of defence,
in NASA footage,

there are things
that cannot be explained.

Narrator: Skylab,
an 85-ton space station,

is near the end
of its 59-day mission.

Owen garriott, Jack lousma,
and Alan bean

are studying the effects

of long-term space travel
on the human body.

We did a lot of physical
examinations of ourselves

to see what was happening
to our body as each day passed.

Narrator:
On September 20th,

pilot Jack lousma
spots something...

A bright red flashing light

traveling across the sky.

Alan bean records the encounter
in his mission diary.

It says here,
"out the ward room window,

"we saw a bright red light

"with a bright dim period
of 10 seconds.

"It got brighter
and drifted along with us

"for 20 minutes or more.

It was the brightest object
we'd seen."

Narrator: Owen garriott
takes a series of photographs.

The first three
capture the bright light.

But the fourth also captures
the object's bizarre shape.

Oberg: One of the pictures
they took was widely published

because it showed what
looked like a squashed spider,

a squiggle,
a squashed slinky toy.

Narrator: Could the object's
shape be an optical illusion?

It's more likely that
that picture

is some kind
of camera aberration,

exposure-setting error.

Narrator: But optical physicist
Bruce maccabee disagrees.

Maccabee:
One thing I am quite sure of

is the structured image is not

an accident
of aberrations in the lens.

The shutter time was probably
about 1/250 of a second.

That's fast enough
to stop almost any hand motion.

Narrator:
Alan bean wonders

if what they saw
was some kind of satellite.

Bean: This was
the brightest object we'd seen,

and it was tumbling,
so it was flashing.

Owen and Jack pointed out
it was probably a satellite.

Then that's what I think it was,
and I said that there.

Narrator:
But oberg is not convinced.

Oberg: No satellites
are dominantly red.

You will probably never see

a red-looking satellite
going by overhead.

Narrator:
During the encounter,

astronaut Owen garriott timed
how long it took the object

to fall into the earth's shadow,
compared with skylab.

Bruce maccabee uses this
information and the photograph

to gauge the object's size.

Maccabee:
You come up with something

that's a couple hundred meters
in size,

much larger than anything
that was in orbit,

much larger even
than the skylab itself,

which was the biggest thing
in orbit at the time.

Narrator: The exact nature
of the bright-red object

seen by the astronauts
on skylab 3

remains a mystery.

It's not space junk.
That doesn't change direction.

It's not a meteor.
They don't change direction.

It's my conclusion

that we're looking at
some kind of spacecraft.

Narrator: Shuttle mission sts-48
is orbiting over Australia,

when one of the external cameras
captures a remarkable event.

An object moves through space.

A flash appears, and the object
changes direction.

Then an unidentified streak

shoots through the frame
at high speed.

James oberg
worked at mission control

when the incident occurred.

The sts-48 video is probably the
classic space-shuttle ufo case

because of dots
appearing on the screen,

some changing course,
zipping around,

and some passing close
to each other, as if by intent.

Narrator:
Physicist Jack kasher

has analyzed
hours of NASA footage.

Dr. kasher:
Every once in a while,

you got something
that's really hard to explain.

Narrator: Having studied
the footage frame by frame,

he rules out
the most obvious explanations.

It's not space junk.
That doesn't change direction.

It's not a meteor.
They don't change direction.

A comet
doesn't enter the atmosphere.

Narrator: Oberg believes the
object is a small piece of ice.

The way stuff
outside the shuttle moves around

is completely unearthly,
as you expect,

because they're off the planet.

And if a thruster fires
or something else leaks out,

it can be blown
to a different course.

Narrator:
But Dr. kasher disagrees.

Dr. kasher:
The object moves over

and really physically stops
for half a second.

Now, if this thing is an
ice particle, it can't do that.

I think that any skeptics
that would try to disparage that

and make these into ice
particles are just simply wrong.

Narrator:
So if the object is not man-made

or natural in origin,

what could it be?

It's my conclusion

that we're looking at
some kind of spacecraft.

Narrator: But what about
the flash that appears

as the object changes direction?

Kasher worked on Reagan's
star wars program in the 1980s.

He wonders if the flash

could be a form
of directed energy weapon.

Some people would tend to think
that it's maybe

some kind of a particle-beam
weapon of some kind.

That is a possibility
i can't rule out.

Narrator: The sts-48 sighting
remains unresolved.

Columbia orbits 200 Miles
above the earth's surface,

preparing one of the most
extraordinary experiments

in NASA's history --

the deployment of a satellite

attached
to a 12-mile-long cable.

Franklin Chang Diaz,

joint record holder for the most
launches in NASA history,

is the mission specialist
on board.

Diaz:
The tether experiment

was a very interesting
experiment in electrodynamics,

essentially creating
a cosmic-sized generator.

Narrator: The crew
hoped to extend the tether

through the earth's
magnetic field,

generating electricity.

As the tether deploys, the
astronauts detect a current.

Then suddenly, the cable breaks.

The tether,
nearly as long as Manhattan,

now threatens
the shuttle and her crew.

Diaz: We didn't
want to get the shuttle

tangled up with this tether
in the next orbit,

so it was important for us to do
a maneuver and get out of there.

Narrator: The shuttle crew
avoids disaster,

watching
multi-million-dollar hardware

float off into the void.

D'Antonio: All they could do
was continue to film it,

and that's what they did.

They zoomed in, they zoomed out,

and this is the footage that
became the sts-75 incident.

Man:
You guys getting the image?

We see a long line,
a couple of star-like things,

and a lot of things
swimming in the foreground.

Narrator: The camera captures
a swarm of objects

flying around the giant tether.

Photo analyst mark d'Antonio
is fascinated by the footage.

D'Antonio:
And these large objects

that appear to be floating
behind the tether,

and because they're sharply
outlined, they appear to be

some type of intelligently
constructed vehicle.

Narrator:
The objects' apparent size

was just as remarkable
as their sheer numbers.

The tether is Miles and Miles
away, and it's 12 Miles long,

and these objects appear to be,
themselves, Miles across.

And this is what excited
the ufo community so much.

This was their smoking gun.

Narrator:
But d'Antonio believes

that the footage isn't
what it appears to be.

This experiment demonstrates
what he thinks happened.

What I've done is I've cut
this piece of material

to simulate the tether seen
in the sts-75 footage.

It's very reflective,
just like the real tether was.

Narrator: D'Antonio positions
the tether away from the camera.

Then he hangs some small
particles in front of it

and starts filming.

D'Antonio: The particles
are very brightly lit,

and they're also out of focus.

When they're out of focus,
they look very large.

Narrator: Video footage
captures the optical illusion.

Small objects in the foreground

appear to pass behind
the distant, bright tether.

D'Antonio: So this shows
that the sts-75 incident,

which caused a massive uproar,

was nothing more
than a video illusion.

Musgrave: I do not know
what that thing was,

and I don't know
what it is today.

Unidentified and unknown.

Narrator:
Shuttle mission sts-80 --

the longest mission of all time.

On board is legendary astronaut
story musgrave.

During down time,

musgrave searches
for unidentified objects.

In order to see objects
out there,

you want to be in the nighttime

and you want the object
to be in the sunlight.

If you want to observe possible
ufos or any other object

or what's going on out there,

that's the only way
you're gonna see stuff.

Narrator: At night,

the shuttle's cameras
are pointed back to earth,

when they capture this event.

Oberg:
Objects appear.

White dots suddenly show up,

maybe from behind the earth,
from behind a cloud.

Narrator: The objects then
seem to move into a circle.

Because of the particular
positions of these objects,

one interpretation has been

that it's deliberate,
to attract attention.

Narrator: As the objects align,
they begin to flash.

Some investigators believe

that this represents an attempt
by ufos to communicate.

Are these objects
talking to each other?

Are they talking to us?

What are they doing?
Why are they blinking?

Narrator:
But photo analyst d'Antonio

has a theory
to explain the blinking.

D'Antonio: The low-light camera
basically picks up intensities.

It can't see
the shapes of the objects.

These objects
are irregular in shape,

and one thing that they're doing
that people don't realize

is they're tumbling.

And as they tumble,

they present a bright face
and then a less bright face,

a bright face and
a less bright face as they move.

This looks like blinking
to the low-light camera.

Musgrave:
The viewers assume

that they were
in the atmosphere,

thousands of Miles away.

If they had been
a thousand Miles away,

that would have been
very impressive.

But they were not.

Narrator:
Oberg also thinks

that the objects are
bits of debris near the shuttle.

Things do look differently,

and given enough random
variations and random motions,

you'll find circles,
you'll find triangles,

you'll find rhomboids.

You'll see them all
if you wait long enough.

Narrator:
While musgrave believes

the sts-80 footage
can be explained,

encounters on two
of his other missions cannot.

Twice he sees and films
this object.

Musgrave: I guess most people
would call it a snake.

I was impressed because
it had internal motion.

Narrator: Musgrave
contacts mission control.

They, too, are unable
to identify the sighting.

I tried to find out.
I don't know what it was.

Narrator: To this day,
musgrave does not have

a satisfactory explanation
for what he saw.

I do not know
what that thing was,

and I don't know
what it is today.

Unidentified and unknown.

Narrator:
Shuttle mission sts-115.

Soon, these astronauts
will be traveling at mach 23,

over 200 Miles above the earth.

Cameras capture
every moment of the launch.

But they also record something

that experts find
very hard to explain.

Man: T-minus three minutes
and counting.

Narrator: As two-time astronaut
Winston Scott knows,

a shuttle launch is the
adrenaline rush of a lifetime.

I can remember
lying on the launch pad,

watching the clock count down
and hearing the engines roar

and watching the smoke and fire
billow up around the windscreen

and then sort of yelling

the way you do when you ride
a big roller coaster.

The solid rocket boosters
ignite,

and then, boom,
you're off to the races.

Narrator: Nearly
8 million pounds of thrust

lift Atlantis
off the launch pad.

After 45 seconds, the shuttle
breaks the sound barrier.

Atlantis is now burning

a swimming pool of fuel
every 25 seconds.

After two minutes, the throttles
come down just a little bit.

The power is reduced.

Then there's a loud explosion --
boom! --

just like a Cannon firing,
and this bright flash outside.

We know that's
the solid rocket boosters

being jettisoned
away from the vehicle.

Narrator:
Seven minutes later,

the shuttle prepares to shed
its fuel tank.

As the camera tracks
the sts-115 fuel tank,

it also captures
this unexplained image

on the bottom right
of the screen.

As we watch
this triangular object move,

it seems to be shadowing the
movement of that external tank.

Narrator: The object's shape
and movement attracts attention.

Dr. kasher: When we think
about extraterrestrial craft,

we think usually
about a saucer-shaped thing,

but we see more than that.

We see triangles, we see
cigar shapes, we see boxes.

A lot of people have seen
triangular spacecraft,

and in this particular case
on sts-115, what do we see?

A triangular-looking object.

This makes it very interesting.

A real alien spacecraft
may look completely different

to anything
that we've conceived of.

Narrator:
But d'Antonio thinks

he has an explanation
for the footage.

One of the conclusions I drew
was that it's very likely

that this is a reflection
in the window

through which
the astronaut is shooting

of something bright
behind the astronaut.

People see things
at the limits of their visions

and fill in
the rest of the details

from their imaginations
or from their fears.

Narrator: No one knows

what NASA has encountered
on many of its missions...

...or what form
alien contact may take.

Shostak:
Life is very diverse.

Life can adapt
to all sorts of conditions

that we haven't thought of.

We kind of think of
alien visitors, for example,

as, you know, some sort of body

that steps out
of some sort of spaceship.

But could there be
the equivalent of --

I don't know -- alien pond scum?

If we continue to think

we are the only planet
that has life on it

in this whole universe

of trillions of trillions
of places,

we're limiting ourselves.

Narrator: While proof
of extraterrestrial life

remains elusive,

for observers like Nick pope,

the question is not whether
aliens will visit earth --

it's whether they already have.

Extraterrestrials might be here,
and we might just not know it.

Maybe we should be thinking
in different ways

and looking in different places.

-- Captions by vitac --
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
discovery communications

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