Major Gordon Cooper
One of the original Mercury Astronauts and the last American to fly in space alone. On May 15, 1963 he shot into space in a Mercury capsule for a 22 orbit journey around the world. During the final orbit, Major Gordon Cooper told the tracking station at Muchea (near Perth Australia) that he could see a glowing, greenish object ahead of him quickly approaching his capsule. The UFO was real and solid, because it was picked up by Muchea’s tracking radar.
Cooper’s sighting was reported by the National Broadcast Company, which was covering the flight step by step; but when Cooper landed, reporters were told that they would not be allowed to question him about the UFO sighting.
Major Cooper was a firm believer in UFOs. Ten years earlier, in 1951 he had sighted a UFO while piloting an F-86 Sabrejet over Western Germany. They were metallic, saucer-shaped discs at considerable altitude and could out-maneuver all American fighter planes.
Major Cooper also testified before the United Nations: I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets… Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs.
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.
And according to a taped interview by J. L. Ferrando, Major Cooper said: For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. 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.
Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means.
I was furthermore a witness to an extraordinary phenomenon, here on this planet Earth. It happened a few months ago in Florida. There I saw with my own eyes a defined area of ground being consumed by flames, with four indentions left by a flying object which had descended in the middle of a field. Beings had left the craft (there were other traces to prove this). They seemed to have studied topography, they had collected soil samples and, eventually, they returned to where they had come from, disappearing at enormous speed…I happen to know that authority did just about everything to keep this incident from the press and TV, in fear of a panicky reaction from the public.
Ed White & James McDivitt
In June 1965, astronauts Ed White (first American to walk in space) and James McDivitt were passing over Hawaii in a Gemini spacecraft when they saw a weird-looking metallic object. The UFO had long arms sticking out of it. McDivitt took pictures with a cine-camera. Those pictures have never been released.
In December 1965, Gemini astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman also saw a UFO during their second orbit of their record-breaking 14 day flight. Borman reported that he saw an unidentified spacecraft some distance from their capsule. Gemini Control, at Cape Kennedy told him that he was seeing the final stage of their own Titan booster rocket. Borman confirmed that he could see the booster rocket all right, but that he could also see something completely different.
During James Lovell’s flight on Gemini 7:
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 SIGHTING.
Capcom: …Estimated distance or size?
Lovell: WE ALSO HAVE THE BOOSTER IN SIGHT…
Donald Slayton
Donald Slayton a Mercury astronaut revealed in an interview he had seen UFOs in 1951:
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 going To 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 away 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.
Major Robert White
On July 17, 1962 Major Robert White reported a UFO during his fifty-eight-mile high flight of an X-15. Major White reported: I have no idea what it could be. It was grayish in color and about thirty to forty feet away.
Then according to a Time Magazine article, Major White exclaimed over the radio: There ARE things out there! There absolutely is!
NASA Pilot Joseph A. Walker
On May 11, 1962 NASA pilot Joseph Walker said that one of his tasks was to detect UFOs during his X-15 flights. He had filmed five or six UFOs during his record breaking fifty-mile-high flight in April, 1962. It was the second time he had filmed UFOs in flight. During a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washington he said:
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
To date none of those films has been released to the public for viewing. Commander Eugene Cernan
Eugene Cernan was commander of Apollo 17. In a Los Angeles Times article in 1973 he said, about UFOs:
…I’ve been asked (about UFOs) and I’ve said publicly I thought they (UFOs) were somebody else, some other civilization.
NASA’s Maurice Chatelain
Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems believes that some UFOs may come from our own solar system — specifically Titan.
The encounter was common knowledge in NASA, but nobody has talked about it until now.
all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin – flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence.
I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name ‘Santa Claus’ to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public. It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear: ‘PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.’ Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words.
The rumors persist. NASA may well be a civilian agency, but many of its programs are funded by the defense budget and most of the astronauts are subject to military security regulations. Apart from the fact that the National Security Agency screens all films and probably radio communications as well. We have the statements by Otto Binder, Dr. Garry Henderson and Maurice Chatelain that the astronauts were under strict orders not to discuss their sightings. And Gordon Cooper has testified to a United Nations committee that one of the astronauts actually witnessed a UFO on the ground. If there is no secrecy, why has this sighting not been made public?