Last Wednesday night (10), the mission Crew-3 took four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), for a six-month mission. The Crew Dragon capsule took about 21 hours to get 30 km away from the ISS, a moment described by the crew as “a very glorious sight”. But they also spotted something a little harder to define.
As the spacecraft approached, one of the astronauts noticed an object outside that looked like a mechanical part. Pilot Tom Marshburn, one of those responsible for overseeing the autonomous capsule’s systems and taking over if necessary, described the situation in a broadcast, published by NASASpaceflight on Twitter:
Crew report seeing an object pass in their centerline camera, could be a nut. SpaceX MCC-X not concerned.
That’ll make several UFO vids on youtube. ???? pic.twitter.com/3JvXn6VBKN
— Chris Bergin – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) November 11, 2021
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The pilot’s calm tone helped to realize that the object didn’t seem at all worrisome in the first place—that is, nothing to speculate about any alien technology, by the way. He described the item as something similar to a twisted doorknob, although it is difficult to say exactly due to the distance from the object.
At that point, Mission Control reassured the crew that the object did not pose any risk to the spacecraft. The “story” ended with the conclusion that it was a mechanical nut or some kind of space junk. After the object disappeared from the image capture area, the Crew Dragon docked with the ISS.
Coincidentally, on November 8, two nights before the launch of Crew-3, a photographer in Zurich, Switzerland, pointed his camera at the sky and took several pictures of what he described as a donut-shaped UFO. At that time, the re-entry of the astronauts from the Crew-2 mission took place, who spent nearly 200 days in space. Composed of several bright blue concentric rings, and the photographer thought he might have “clicked” on the SpaceX capsule.
However, when the capsule dubbed Endeavor “splashdown” in the Gulf of Mexico, the photographer was about 8,000 km away. It is unlikely that he would have had a chance to see the ship re-entry, because even if it passed over Switzerland before landing that night, it would have been in Earth’s shadow, not receiving illumination from the Sun. According to Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, this “UFO” must also some space junk, probably the upper stage of a rocket reentering the atmosphere. The photographer ended up deleting from his Twitter the publication in which he published the “UFO in a donut shape” — perhaps because of the sensational repercussion that his photo generated around.
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