DISCLOSURE / FILE
Excerpts from the three Skylab crew technical debriefings (1973-1974) in which astronauts describe light flashes seen with closed eyes, a bright reddish object tracked in a similar orbit, and flashing lights moving relative to the station.
NASA-UAP-D7, Skylab Techincal Crew Debriefing 1973
Excerpts from the three Skylab crew technical debriefings (1973-1974) in which astronauts describe light flashes seen with closed eyes, a bright reddish object tracked in a similar orbit, and flashing lights moving relative to the station.
Compiled from JSC-08053 (Skylab 1/2, June 30 1973), JSC-08478 (Skylab 1/3, October 4 1973), and JSC-08809 (Skylab 1/4, February 22 1974), the document captures verbatim crew remarks on visual phenomena. Skylab 2 Science Pilot Joseph Kerwin and crewmates Pete Conrad and Paul Weitz describe recurring light flashes inside the eye, sometimes attributed to cosmic particles. Skylab 3 Science Pilot Owen Garriott and Pilot Jack Lousma describe a reddish object tracked for 5 to 10 minutes in a nearly identical orbit, rotating with a 10-second brightness period, that they estimated at 30 to 50 nautical miles away and never re-acquired. Skylab 4 Commander Gerald Carr reports two or three sightings of flashing lights with definite motion relative to the station, presumed to be Skylab debris or other satellites.
Extracted text · Page 1
Page 1 · vision OCR
BEA/J. Grimwood
JSC-08053
SKYLAB 1/2
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
JUNE 30, 1973
PREPARED BY
TRAINING OFFICE
CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under
the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its
release to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled
under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, TexasPage 2 · vision OCR
KERWIN Unusual or Unexpected Visual Phenomenon. We saw light flashes.
(CONT'D)
I think all of us saw them. I saw them most often when I was
in the sack at night with my eyes closed but awake naturally.
They tended to wax and wane in frequency. Someone asked me if
that was in conjunction with the South Atlantic anomaly. It
may have been. I didn't have the pad with me at that time and
I don't know. They were numerous at times - two or three per
minute.
CONRAD Some of them to me were a spot or sunbursts. Some were streaks.
The streaks, in my case, were less frequent than the bursts.
Most of them were in my peripheral visual field. Very few in
the central visual field. I don't know why.
QUERY You could isolate them to one eye, couldn't you?
KERWIN No, I couldn't.
WEITZ I would say mine were primarily in the left eye for some
reason.
CONRAD You have to concentrate but you can determine they are in one
eye.
KERWIN I did not. That was foolish of me but I didn't try. I'm sure
they are in one eye.
23-20Page 11 · vision OCR
CARR but we did find it very interesting to be able to see other
(CONT'D)
objects up there with us. The fact that one or two of them
appeared to be tumbling was apparently due to the oscillation
of the light flashes that we were getting from them.
POGUE The OWS Heat Exchangers: There's a major design flaw there in
that filters were not installed upstream of the OWS heat exchanger
vanes. When we first arrived, the vanes were so uniformly coated
with lint that I thought there was some kind of anodized surface
on them. I was never fully convinced that I had done the
vacumming job properly; therefore, I fabricated a special tool
that fit flush against those surface vanes so that I could
exert a good vacuum. Though they are not supposed to be con-
dense heat exchangers, I sucked quite a bit of condensate water
out of them. I tried the best I could to keep those things
clean, yet I never did get all that lint pulled out of there.
That is why I think we needed a filter in the system.
GIBSON EVA anomalies might also be mentioned here. For example, you
had the water leak outside, and I also got a water leak.
POGUE One thing that was not mentioned on air-to-ground as a possible
cause of the problem was the single-point failure that exists
in the mechanical way that the PCU composite connector is
hooked to the PCU. I was able during EVA, maneuvering through
the clothesline ropes, not only to open the lock but also to
extend the arm which pulls the PCU composite connector off.
7-9Concatenated page-by-page transcript. Born-digital pages came through pdf.js; scanned pages were transcribed by Claude vision OCR. Pages marked unreadable failed multiple OCR retries (heavy redaction, microfilm artifacts, or blank separators) and are kept in place for audit.
BEA/J. Grimwood
JSC-08053
SKYLAB 1/2
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
JUNE 30, 1973
PREPARED BY
TRAINING OFFICE
CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under
the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its
release to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled
under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, TexasKERWIN Unusual or Unexpected Visual Phenomenon. We saw light flashes.
(CONT'D)
I think all of us saw them. I saw them most often when I was
in the sack at night with my eyes closed but awake naturally.
They tended to wax and wane in frequency. Someone asked me if
that was in conjunction with the South Atlantic anomaly. It
may have been. I didn't have the pad with me at that time and
I don't know. They were numerous at times - two or three per
minute.
CONRAD Some of them to me were a spot or sunbursts. Some were streaks.
The streaks, in my case, were less frequent than the bursts.
Most of them were in my peripheral visual field. Very few in
the central visual field. I don't know why.
QUERY You could isolate them to one eye, couldn't you?
KERWIN No, I couldn't.
WEITZ I would say mine were primarily in the left eye for some
reason.
CONRAD You have to concentrate but you can determine they are in one
eye.
KERWIN I did not. That was foolish of me but I didn't try. I'm sure
they are in one eye.
23-20CONRAD Sometimes I'd be lying there with my eyes half closed, and I'd
see a fire sensor wink.
KERWIN And you'd have to be careful that you weren't confusing that
with the fire flash. Once you've seen a few of each, there is
question of which is which. They're not an hallucination.
KERWIN We didn't feel it was operationally necessary for anybody to
know about it right now.
WEITZ I had a couple that I thought were cosmic particles. I saw
an entrance streak and an exit streak.
CONRAD Yes, I did too.
WEITZ Where, bing-bing, it seemed like it was one side of the eyeball,
and then the other side.
CONRAD One night I remember that there was a long shot then it was
blank then there was a long shot in rapid succession, of
course, but very definitely in and out - or across the eye.
KERWIN Medical Kits and IMSS. As far as adequate quantity of medica-
tion and supplies, I would guess we used about 0.01 percent
of the available medication. I think this is something for
me to sit down with the doctors and talk about. There is
plenty of medicine up there for the Skylab missons. There is
23-21JSC-08478
SKYLAB 1/3
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
PREPARED BY
TRAINING OFFICE
CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests
for its release to persons outside the U.S. Government should be
handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, Texas
OCTOBER 4, 1973BEAN I did too. The sack would move over in the corner.
LOUSMA Things we saw out the window.
GARRIOTT For example, we saw that satellite about a week before splash-
down. That was one of the most unusual things that we saw
and I guess Jack noticed it looking out the window. This
bright reddish object was out there and we tracked it for
about 5 or 10 minutes. It was obviously a satellite in a very
similar orbit to our own. It was rotating and had a period
of almost exactly 10 seconds because you could see the bright-
ness vary with that period. We followed it until sunset and
it went out of sunlight just about 5 to 7 seconds after we
did. It held its position nearly the same, in the wardroom
window for that 10-minute interval although we could see it
drift in relative positions slightly, maybe 10 to - 20 degrees
during the course of that 10-minute interval. It was reddish
in color even when we were well above the horizon. As we
approached sunset, it turned more reddish, presumably because
. of the sunlight change. What satellite it was and how it
happened to end up in such a similar orbit, no one ever explained
to us. And I would like to hear a few words from someone about
that satellite.
7-4BEAN You bet. We never saw it again. You'd think we would have
seen it the next night or it would cycle by another time.
Maybe it did and we weren't looking out the window.
LOUSMA You might point out that it never did take the shape of an
object but it was always brighter than any other star or
planet in the night sky. It was much brighter.
BEAN We tried monitors and everything on it but we could never
make it into anything other than a bright light.
LOUSMA In doing T002, I had on other occasions, at least once or
twice, seen other satellites although they appeared as star
points of light.
BEAN Let's talk about caution/warnings at night and in the daytime.
I noticed at first when we did have caution/warnings in the
daytime we all whistled up there real quick to see what was
happening. Then as the mission wore on, we tended to just let
whoever was closest take a look. Without the TACS on, there
isn't a lot that can go on except rapid DELTA-P which sounds
different than any of the other caution/warnings, particularly
just a caution. I recommend to Jerry and his crew, and I'm
sure that this recommendation will be hard to live by, that
caution/warnings don't appear to be anything you have to hurry
and resolve or stop doing your tasks to race up to the panel
7-520.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS
LOUSMA Let's talk about visual sightings. Any comments on countdown.
You saw your way to the booster or you didn't see that.
Visual sighting no problem there.
BEAN You might want to talk about the visual sightings on that
orbit when Owen and Jack saw the satellite.
LOUSMA Yes, let's go through countdown. Any visual sightings on
countdown that were significant? We saw the swing arm go
away and all that kind of thing.
Powered Flight: I watched the booster protector cover go
off and lots of flashes and debris and everything in every
separation, but that's all norminal. During orbit: -
GARRIOTT Do you want to talk about that satellite?
LOUSMA I saw a couple of satellites that appeared like a satellite
would on the Earth. I saw one that was not like one you
would see on Earth, so why don't you mention it.
GARRIOTT Okay, about a week or 10 days before recovery and we were
still waiting for information to be supplied to us about the
indentification. Jack first noticed this rather large red star
out the wardroom window. Upon close examination, it was much
brighter than Jupiter or any of the other planets. It had
20-1GARRIOTT a reddish hue to it, even though it was well above the
(CONT'D)
horizon. The light from the Sun was not passing close to
the Earth's limb at the time. We observed it for about
10 minutes prior to sunset. It was slowly rotating because
it had a variation in brightness with a 10-second period.
As I was saying, we observed it for about 10 minutes, until
we went into darkness, and it also followed us into darkness
about 5-seconds later. From the 5- to 10-second delay in
it's disappearance we surmised that it was not more than 30
to 50 nautical miles from our location. From it's original
position in the wardroom window, it did not move more than
10 or 20 degrees over the 10 minutes or so that we watched it.
It's orbit was very close to that of our own. We never saw
it on any - earlier or succeeding orbits and we'd be quite
interested in having its identification established. It's
all debriefed in terms of time on channel A, so the percise
timing and location can be picked up from there.
LOUSMA Okay, other visual sightings was the one out the wardroom
window. That sunrise or sunset which finally led us to the
RCS leak in the command module. It disappeared like
thousands and thousands of stars out there; all of them
different sizes and drifting along the X-axis. The one that
we already mentioned. The one right after insertion where
we saw the leak in the same manner of the RCS streaming towards
20-2BE4/K. Grimwood
JSC-08809
SKYLAB 1/4
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
FEBRUARY 22, 1974
PART I
PREPARED BY
TRAINING OFFICE
CREW TRAINING AND PROCEDURES DIVISION
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public
disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act
(5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its release to persons
outside the U. S. Government should be handled under
the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, TexasGIBSON are still on the windows. Just what that material is, I'm not
(CONT'D)
sure. But the remaining pieces should be useful for contamina-
tion studies.
CARR One other item is the ammonia odor in the head which we dis-
covered about the last week in the mission. We weren't sure what
was causing it. Bill had changed out the charcoal canister.
We disconnected the boot between the charcoal canister and the
blower above it and took a sniff of that. We smelled, no ammonia
there. When we connected the boot back up to the blower, a
very strong ammonia odor came from the blower output. Thus it
appears that the source of the smell was the blower unit itself
and not the charcoal canister. As we said in our report of it
to the ground, we decided that it was tolerable for the rest of
the mission. Therefore, we didn't get into the mode of finding
another blower to put in there. I feel that the odor very
definitely increased in intensity during the final week of the
mission.
CARR One other area of unusual events that we reported on the dump
tapes was that on occasion we saw some lights flashing outside
with very a definite motion relative to ours. We presumed that
they were other pieces of Skylab, or possibly other satellites.
We reported our two or three sightings of that kind as soon as
they occurred. We have no special comments concerning them,
7-8CARR but we did find it very interesting to be able to see other
(CONT'D)
objects up there with us. The fact that one or two of them
appeared to be tumbling was apparently due to the oscillation
of the light flashes that we were getting from them.
POGUE The OWS Heat Exchangers: There's a major design flaw there in
that filters were not installed upstream of the OWS heat exchanger
vanes. When we first arrived, the vanes were so uniformly coated
with lint that I thought there was some kind of anodized surface
on them. I was never fully convinced that I had done the
vacumming job properly; therefore, I fabricated a special tool
that fit flush against those surface vanes so that I could
exert a good vacuum. Though they are not supposed to be con-
dense heat exchangers, I sucked quite a bit of condensate water
out of them. I tried the best I could to keep those things
clean, yet I never did get all that lint pulled out of there.
That is why I think we needed a filter in the system.
GIBSON EVA anomalies might also be mentioned here. For example, you
had the water leak outside, and I also got a water leak.
POGUE One thing that was not mentioned on air-to-ground as a possible
cause of the problem was the single-point failure that exists
in the mechanical way that the PCU composite connector is
hooked to the PCU. I was able during EVA, maneuvering through
the clothesline ropes, not only to open the lock but also to
extend the arm which pulls the PCU composite connector off.
7-9