Page 65 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Jan-Feb 2018, Vol 27, No 1

NASA Engineer Debunks Online UFOs 65

This Former NASA

Engineer Has Debunked

Pretty Much Every Online

UFO Sighting

scienceaf.com

You've probably seen more than your fair share
of stories about UFO sightings. An astronaut on
the ISS just has to catch footage of a fireball
shooting across Earth's skies, and conspiracy
theorists have a field day. Whether it's clouds
that look like spaceships or rogue meteors, the
internet loves a good alien conspiracy.
But former NASA engineer James Oberg
has taken it upon himself to trawl through all the
sightings and stories out there and politely
debunk them, using science.
The conclusion? Most of your "insane
UFO sightings" are little more than 'space
dandruff', or your brain misunderstanding of
what space travel actually looks like, says spacecraft, Oberg explains on his site. All of this isn't to say we should give up
Oberg. These flecks of dandruff are pretty on sharing our UFO sightings, or assuming that
As Cara Giaimo from Atlas Obscura common, but the reason they look so weird to us everything is 'normal'.
reports, after working at NASA mission control is that we're not used to the way these objects "It's good to keep scanning space video
in the late '90s, Oberg went on to become a look when they fall while the space station is for possible anomalies and reporting them
space journalist and historian. It wasn't until a travelling through space. quickly," Oberg told The Huffington Post back
few years ago that he started to take UFO It's the same reason why people see so in 2013.
sightings seriously. many UFOs in the footage filmed by the "The reason is, there is always a real
His goal isn't to simply crap all over true cameras attached to NASA's old space shuttle chance that it could be a genuine anomaly, either
believers - he calls that "stomping on dormice" - missions. a spacecraft malfunction or other threat,
instead he's interested in teasing out exactly In these videos, people usually freak out expected or unexpected. In the past, missions
what's going on in these images and videos, and because the spots seem to dance in and out of have failed because a clue that should have been
trying to figure out why people are reacting so view, or suddenly appear and disappear. Which seen out the window was overlooked."
strongly to them. is pretty creepy if you're sitting at your computer
His hypothesis? Our human senses are so on Earth, but isn't that weird if you're on a space About James Oberg
used to focussing on relatively slow-moving shuttle travelling 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph) -
objects, as well as certain light and atmosphere nothing's going to stay in your frame of vision
conditions, that when things change, our brains very long.
get confused. And if the spacecraft is in the right
"Our sensory system is functioning position in relation to the Sun, it can also cast its
absolutely perfectly for Earth conditions," shadow onto these objects to make them
Oberg told Giaimo. "But we're still a local disappear and reappear, which is known as
civilisation. Moving beyond our neighbourhood 'twilight shadowing'.
has been visually confusing."
Some of the most common sighting he That weird Californian flare across the
has to debunk are to do with NASA astronauts
night sky
reportedly seeing UFOS and being forced to
keep silent, which Oberg says is a result of us
At the end of 2015, people in southern
watching too much sci-fi and not really
California freaked out when they saw a bright
understanding what space really looks like.
white light shoot across the night sky. JAMES OBERG spent 22 years as a space
"I've had enough experience with real engineer at the Johnson Space Center in
But, as was cleared up pretty soon after
spaceflight to realise that what's being seen in Houston, TX where he specialized in NASA
the incident, it was actually the result of a
many videos is nothing beyond the 'norm' from space shuttle operations for orbital rendezvous.
planned, unarmed missile test by the US Navy.
fully mundane phenomena occurring in In honor of his pioneering work, on developing
That strange looking trail of light was the plume
unearthly settings," Oberg writes over on his
of particles blasted out by the rocket thruster. and documenting these space shuttle rendezvous
site.
So why did it look so creepy to everyone techniques, he was named by the NASA-Area
Here are some of the more common
else? Because here on Earth, we're used to "Association of Technical Societies" as their
reports you might have seen on the interwebs,
seeing thin vapour trails left by planes, or 1984 "Technical Person of the Year". In 1997 he
and Oberg's explanation of what's really going
billowing smoke plumes. But most of us have received the "Sustained Superior Performance"
on: award for designing the complex first Space
rarely (if ever) seen anything so big and sharp as
this. Station assembly mission.
UFO sightings at the International In support of NASA's spaceflight
"There were thousands of people who
Space Station were absolutely processing their visual stimuli operations he has written books on Rendezvous
correctly if [the plume] was a mile away or 10 Flight Procedures, on Mission Control Center
The real story? Space dandruff, which are things miles away [16 km]," Oberg told Atlas Obscura. console operations, and on the history of orbital
that have shed off space vehicles during flight, "But it was 300 miles [482 km] away, up in rendezvous. He provides expert assessment and
like ice flakes, paint chips, or fragments of space and sunlit, which never occurred to them, forecasts of Russian space industrial and
insulation. They're different to space junk, because this is not something within the normal technological elements for corporate and
because they don't pose a real threat to range of human experience." government clients. []