View northeast from Endeavour into the Andes, April 15, 1994 (STS059-L15-047)

Our Space Radar Lab 1 crew on Endeavour, STS-59, took this shot into the heart of the Andes during the first week of our Mission to Planet Earth. This view looks across the Andes from orbit, about 134 miles above Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile.

The backbone of the Andes runs from upper left to lower right, with north at upper left, south to lower right. The highest reaches of the Andes are topped with snow and ice in mid-April (early autumn in the southern hemisphere). The prominent M-shaped peak at center-left, beneath the smooth basin, is Cerro Mercedario, the highest peak of the Cordillera de la Ramada range and the eighth-highest mountain of the Andes. Mercedario rises to 6720 meters, about 22,050 feet.

South of Mercedario, just left of center, is the prominent white peak of Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside of Asia, at 6,961 metres (22,838 ft), and by extension the highest point in both the Western and Southern hemispheres. Aconcagua is not a volcano, but an upthrust block of the Andes lifted by the collision of the Nazca tectonic plate with the South American plate. 

At top center is the city of San Juan, lying beneath the bread-loaf-shaped ridge to the east of those eroded ridgelines at upper left. The salt lake Lago Pampa de las Salinas is the arrowhead-shaped lake at top center.

The exceptionally clear air over the Andes and the mountains’ ruggedness make this view almost three-dimensional. It’s almost as if I’m back up there!

Here is a Google Maps view for orientation:

Google Map view of Chile, Andes, and area in STS-59 photo above. (Google Maps)

Read my chapter “Seeing Space” in “Ask the Astronaut” for more perspectives on Earth, at AstronautTomJones.com.

Not a flying saucer. This is Wakeshield Facility 3, one of the two satellites we launched and retrieved from Columbia on STS-80 during Nov. 1996. (NASA STS080-708-065)

During the week of April 11, 2011, the FBI released some of its investigation records on UFOs. The reports reflect the reality that people do see unexplained phenomena in the sky. Are these sightings evidence for intelligent life elsewhere, or some secret flight testing program?

Much UFO speculation in the past has focused on one of my shuttle missions, STS-80, flown in late 1996. Some have maintained that video shot during this Columbia space shuttle flight provides evidence for unknown objects moving in the night sky. I have reviewed this video (for the first time in 1997), and conclude that it shows commonplace and well-known objects near the shuttle, all of them observed on every shuttle flight. These videos show low-light television camera images of ice particles or man-made debris drifting out of Columbia’s cargo bay, and floating in the vicinity of the shuttle, likely within a few tens of feet of the orbiter.

I have seen these snippets of STS-80 video many times since our flight. These video scenes were recorded by remote control, under ground command, with flight controllers in Houston’s Mission Control operating our low-light TV camera in the cargo bay. As far as I remember, nobody on the crew was looking out the window at these ice crystals or debris particles. Nobody thought anything that our crew observed out the window was of “alien” origin, or something not connected to the shuttle’s routine operations (e.g. a large rotating disk or any such unusual structure). Once you understand what the solar illumination conditions are (orbital twilight, with darkness below and sunlight at our altitude), it’s easy to conclude that the video shows normal small ice and debris particles drifting aimlessly away from the orbiter, with some pieces becoming sunlit as they move out of the shuttle’s shadow. During our science operations, robotic satellite deployments and grapples, and robot arm tests and exercises, we routinely noticed these ice particles and debris catching the brilliant sunlight outside. But these sightings were non-events for us, as we understood what we were seeing completely.

Both the flight crew and Mission Control are always attentive to particles seen outside the windows, or on payload bay cameras. Such sightings could be clues to spacecraft problems, such as a vital piece of equipment that has shaken loose. Those sightings need to be reported ASAP and openly discussed — is it a fuel leak, or a piece off the rudder, or damage to the TPS (tiles), or other bad news? Crewmembers and flight controllers have no reason to ever keep it secret or to keep these discussions off normal radio channels.

Aside from details of specific Defense Department payloads and their deployments, astronauts have no classification regulations or rules preventing anyone from discussing anything they’ve seen or experienced on space flights. No secret non-disclosure signatures, no secret threats, no secret brainwashing–we communicate openly with the public. What we get, you get. What we see that’s unusual, we tell you about.

I have spent many hours gazing out the shuttle windows during my 53 days in orbit, under all lighting and orbiter attitude conditions. The objects seen in the STS-80 videos are ordinary debris particles or ice crystals, some hit by shuttle thruster blasts that cause a change in their motion. Local lighting conditions also change the brightness of some objects as they drift into or out of shadow. I have never seen any evidence in space or on Earth of spacecraft or phenomena not explained by our routine space operations in the shuttle or Space Station programs. My crewmates and I have not seen any evidence for UFOs or spacecraft of “alien” origin or behavior. The STS-80 videos are records of normal space shuttle operations and optical phenomena.

It is regrettable that so many spaceflight-minded young people have their enthusiasms exploited by misinterpretations of such shuttle videos. These inaccurate theories about what the videos show–some naive, some possibly deliberately misleading–waste a great deal of productive energy. Insisting that astronauts have seen alien vehicles is incorrect: a deliberate falsehood. This myth wastes years of healthy curiosity and diverts it to pseudo-scientific wild goose chases, and is a disservice to the fantastic and dedicated work done in orbit by Space Station and shuttle crews, and their support team on Earth. Those still arguing about non-existent UFOs seen by space shuttle crews are wasting their time. Worse, they are misleading young explorers who don’t deserve to miss out on the genuine thrills and wonder of the spaceflight experience, its importance for the advancement of our species, and our understanding of the home planet and our universe.

Tom Jones, PhD

Planetary Scientist

Astronaut on STS-59, -68, -80, and -98

Author of Ask the Astronaut, Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, and Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System.

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Endeavour’s astronauts on the STS-59 crew took this image of the Appalachian Mountain chain, looking north. April 18, 1994. (NASA STS059-230-074)

Early spring in the Appalachians jumps out at the astronauts aboard Endeavour, STS-59, Space Radar Lab 1. At an altitude of about 120 nautical miles, the Endeavour crew used a Hasselblad camera body with a 40mm lens to capture this northward view.

Washington, DC is at the bottom right edge of the photo, with I-95 leading northeast to Baltimore on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The crooked arm of the Patapsco River is visible at the city center. (The Orioles were playing in the nearly new Camden Yards baseball stadium there.)

Moving up the coast, at the head of the Chesapeake, the Susquehanna River flows in from the west (left) in a dark green valley that slices through the mountain ridges. Philadelphia is next in line, on the Delaware River, with the dark green of the Jersey pine barrens at upper right. Finally, Long Island and New York City are visible at top right.

The Finger Lakes in upstate New York are at upper left, along with the shore of Lake Ontario. The ribbon-like sweep of the Appalachians dominates the center of this photo; these are the eroded roots of a folded chain of mountains that were once as high as the Rockies. The easternmost ridge at center is the Blue Ridge, and at bottom right is the silvery squiggle of the south fork of the Shenandoah River, flowing north to the Potomac along the western face of the Blue Ridge.

New spring leaves have not yet emerged at the higher elevations of the Appalachians, leaving just the rust-brown hue of fallen leaves and bare branches along the ridges. One can see the barrier that the Appalachians presented to early European settlers, confining them largely to the eastern seaboard for the first 150 years of settlement in eastern North America.

I grew up in Baltimore, so I truly enjoy the detail in this photo. Read more about viewing Earth in “Seeing Space,” a chapter in my new book, “Ask the Astronaut.” Copies available at:

www.AstronautTomJones.com

The Galapagos Islands viewed by the STS-59 Endeavour crew, April 12, 1994. We used a 40mm lens on a Hasselblad camera for this near-vertical shot. (NASA STS059-81-081)

We looked down from 118 nautical miles on Space Radar Lab 1 and were wowed by this ecological playground. The volcanic landscape, mottled by the dark streaks and flows of basaltic lavas erupted from these shield volcanoes, is always a striking sight. North is toward the upper right, Isla Isabella is the seahorse-shaped large island at center, flanked by Isla Fernandina on the left and Isla Santiago on the center right. At lower right is Isla Santa Cruz, with the small Isla Floreana at bottom center. We saw no volcanic activity, but the islands were a major target for radar mapping of the islands’ successive lava flows, using roughness measurements to gauge the relative age of previous eruptions. That sequence can tell us how active the islands have been before historical times, and give us a sense of when a future eruption might be expected.

NASA has noted that “the Galapagos Islands, which are part of Ecuador, sit in the Pacific Ocean about 1000 km (620 miles) west of South America. As the three craters on the largest island (Isabela Island) suggest, the archipelago was created by volcanic eruptions, which took place millions of years ago.

The western Galapagos Islands have six active volcanoes similar to the volcanoes found in Hawaii. Since the time of Charles Darwin’s visit to the area in 1835, there have been over 60 recorded eruptions of these volcanoes.

Unlike most remote islands in the Pacific, the Galapagos have gone relatively untouched by humans over the past few millennia. As a result, many unique species have continued to thrive on the islands. Over 95 percent of the islands’ reptile species and nearly three quarters of its land bird species cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Two of the more well known are the Galapagos giant tortoise and marine iguanas. The unhindered evolutionary development of the islands’ species inspired Charles Darwin to begin The Origin of Species eight years after his visit there. To preserve the unique wildlife on the islands, the Ecuadorian government made the entire archipelago a national park in 1959. Each year roughly 60,000 tourists visit these islands to experience what Darwin did over a century and a half ago.”

I’ve not made it to the Galapagos–yet. But this evolutionary case study is high on my list of future vacation spots.

Read more about the view from orbit in “Seeing Space,” a chapter in my new book, Ask the Astronaut.

Inverness, Loch Ness, and northern Scotland from Endeavour, STS-59. April 10, 1994. Hasselblad 100mm. (NASA STS059-76-077)

Inverness, in northern Scotland, is known as “The Capital of the Highlands.” The city derives its name from the Scots’ Gaelic term “Inbhir Nis” which translates as “mouth of the Ness.” It officially became a city in 2001 after competing with other locations to be awarded the status of “city.”

In this image, Inverness is centrally located and is split by the River Ness at the deep indentation into the northeast Scottish coast. Loch Ness is the dagger-like, cloud-free lake pointing to the lower left of this photo.

In early April, snow still covered the Scottish highlands as my Space Radar Lab crew coasted over on Endeavour, STS-59. Still on my bucket list to visit!

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Mt. Ararat far right) in far eastern Turkey on the Armenian border. Shot from STS-59 Endeavour on April 4, 1994 with a 100mm Hasselblad. NASA STS059-201-094)

Early spring shows lingering snows on the mountains of far eastern Turkey and its border region with Armenia. Mt. Aragats, a dormant volcano in Armenia, is at top in this photo, at 13,419 feet. North is to the upper left. At far right center is the twin-volcano plateau of Mt. Ararat, which last erupted in 1840. The river angling from lower left to upper right is the border between Turkey and Armenia, the Aras, flowing east toward the Kura and the Caspian Sea. The frozen, volcanic lake in the mountains at lower center is Balik Gulu, or Fish Lake. The Armenian capital, Yerevan, is located just east of a line between Ararat and Aragats, between the river and the center/top/right of the photo (I can’t see it very well).

Ararat is 5,137 m (16,854 ft) tall, and is the traditional resting place of Noah’s Ark. This entire eastern region of Turkey and Armenia is full of volcanoes, rugged mountains, and tectonic faults that generate massive quakes. Our crew on Space Radar Lab 1 mapped such tectonic faults across the entire sweep of the continents. STS-59 flew from April 9 to April 20, 1994. These photos keep my memories of that mission crisp.

www.AstronautTomJones.com