NASA's Unexplained Files

Narrator: In more than half a century of space exploration,

NASA has captured images

of some of the most extraordinary things

in the universe --

desolate planets...

Giant solar flares...

and distant nebulae.

But they've also captured remarkable images

closer to home...

...objects which seem to defy explanation,

flying just outside earth's atmosphere.

Man: We see a couple of star-like things.

Narrator: Senior NASA astronauts

remain disturbed by the phenomena they've seen.

I do not know what that thing was,

and I don't know what it is today.

Narrator: Can these sightings be explained?

It's my conclusion

that we're looking at some kind of spacecraft.

People see things at the limits of their visions

and fill in the rest of the details

from their imaginations or from their fears.

Narrator: Is there now evidence

of advanced extraterrestrial life?

Billions of planetary creatures that have left their planet...

...and they're visiting other solar systems.

I am very certain of our visitation by external species.

Narrator: Incredible official footage.

One thing we can say about this NASA footage

is it's unimpeachable.

Narrator: The greatest missions of all time.

We reveal NASA's strangest encounters in space.

NASAs.Unexplained.Files.S01E01.Pilot.1080p.WEB.x264-CRiMSON Sync and Corrections - UF English SRT Subtitles - UF (v1.01)

John Glenn prepares for a historic mission.

He'll be the first American to orbit earth.

Man: Glenn prepares to go to the 11th deck

as clocks point to 6:00 A.M., eastern standard time.

Narrator: NASA deliberately picked a world war ii hero

known for performing under extreme pressure.

At 11:03 A.M., Glenn steps onto the rocket platform.

Man: The seconds tick off,

as his rendezvous with space approaches.

I'm sure John Glenn had some butterflies in his stomach

while he was sitting on the launch pad,

waiting to launch on friendship 7.

Glenn: Affirmative, man.

Bleakley: The atlas booster rocket

hadn't had a very successful gestation period.

There had been some very violent accidents with it.

Narrator: In spite of this,

Glenn is ready to put his life on the line.

Man: Godspeed, John Glenn.

Glenn: Roger -- zero g, and I feel fine.

Capsule is turning around.

Narrator: Just five minutes after launch,

Glenn reaches orbit.

Glenn: Oh, that view is tremendous.

But then Glenn witnesses something totally unexpected.

Hazy, darting lights surround his capsule.

A mass of them envelop the craft.

Glenn: I never saw anything like it.

They're coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars,

a whole shower of them coming by.

They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window,

and they're all brilliantly lighted.

Bleakley: John Glenn saw some small objects

out his window of his spacecraft,

and he called them the fireflies.

He never figured out what they were,

and neither did anyone else.

Narrator: After the stress of such a dangerous launch,

could Glenn have imagined these so-called fireflies?

Space historian James oberg thinks this is unlikely.

The early astronauts, the main thing they were able to do

was to think straight when under pressure.

They wouldn't freeze up. They wouldn't panic.

They had a special kind of attitude

toward getting through danger.

Narrator: So if he wasn't imagining them, what were they?

Fellow astronaut story musgrave has witnessed something similar

and thinks they are particles of ice.

Musgrave: They have thousands of pieces of ice.

It is gorgeously beautiful.

It gets even more beautiful when they get further out

'cause they're rotating.

Now they're fireflies, and they turn on and off.

Narrator: Today, most experts

agree with musgrave's explanation,

but Glenn was at the dawn of a new era of human exploration,

where every launch was a journey into the unknown.

Looking for signs of alien life may seem strange,

but most scientists today believe it is highly likely

that life does exist elsewhere in the universe.

There must be, because we're finding more and more planets --

1,500 planets now, just recently.

So to think that no life has evolved on those planets,

that we're all alone in the universe

just is almost preposterous.

It's like going back to thinking

that the earth is the center of the universe.

We found life living

in all sorts of environments here on earth.

We're even beginning to find planets

that are sort of like the earth.

So all these signs, all these arrows

are pointing in the same direction,

namely that there probably is life out there.

Narrator: Some astronomers believe

our own galaxy, the milky way,

contains billions of potentially habitable planets.

And this is only a tiny fraction of the known universe.

One photograph, one of the deep fields of hubble,

is roughly 300 trillion stars.

That's a big number.

That's only one -- one deep field.

Even where we said, "we'll aim it where there's nothing,"

well, it turns out another 1,000, 2,000 galaxies.

Narrator: Many believe

that these literally astronomical numbers...

Mean the existence of alien life is a near certainty.

Shostak: The number of planets

in the part of the universe we can see

is roughly comparable to the number of grains of sand

on all the beaches of the earth.

Well, the bottom line is very simple --

with such enormous amount of cosmic real estate,

it seems so improbable that we could be alone.

Narrator: Aboard Gemini iv,

astronaut ed white begins America's first spacewalk.

White: Okay, I'm out.

Narrator: Command pilot James mcdivitt

watches from inside the capsule.

White: I feel like a million dollars.

Narrator: The next day, ed white sleeps

while Gemini passes over the pacific ocean.

Suddenly, mcdivitt notices an object outside their craft.

An official communication log

records mcdivitt's conversation with Houston.

Back on earth, NASA

and NORAD, the north American aerospace defense command,

attempt to identify the sighting.

The closest man-made object they locate

is 1,200 Miles away.

Nick pope was an official ufo investigator

for the British ministry of defense.

He has studied thousands of sightings,

dating back over 50 years.

There wasn't a discrepancy

between what James mcdivitt saw and reported

and what NORAD was suggesting that he had actually seen.

Narrator: Some observers believe

that the object was part of the Gemini craft.

McDivitt disagrees.

McDivitt now still says it was not his own booster.

He said he saw it, and he says it was not.

Narrator: Journalists speculate

that mcdivitt saw a secret spy satellite.

We know at the time, in the mid '60s,

that there were satellites being launched

that were not announced,

and it's reasonable to suspect

that someone might launch a satellite and make it stealthy.

So you never could be sure what was out there.

Narrator: But NASA confirmed

no secret satellites were in the area.

On June 7th, the Gemini capsule lands in the Atlantic ocean.

Officials remove mcdivitt's film from the craft,

and it takes four days to process the images.

And when they are released,

mcdivitt says they are not of the object he witnessed.

Oberg: I've seen the original flight film.

It's pretty clear that he did not capture

what it was he was seeing there.

But what it could have been was a real mystery.

Narrator: To this day, it is not known what mcdivitt saw.

Shostak: The idea behind this is very simple.

You tune over as wide a range of the radio dial as you can,

looking for a signal.

Finding evidence of another intelligent species

would change the future history of our species forever.

Narrator: Seth shostak is senior astronomer at SETI,

the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

He is one of many scientists

actively trying to find signs of alien life

elsewhere in the universe.

Shostak: Finding evidence of another intelligent species

would change the future history of our species forever.

Narrator: SETI's radio observatory

is based near lassen national forest, California.

Shostak: Hey, this is a beautiful place --

I love coming up here -- but it is kind of isolated.

But, of course, that's why it's here, right?

You want to get away from what's called man-made interference.

Narrator: Day after day,

shostak and his colleagues scour the skies,

searching for a signal from space.

Shostak: The idea behind this is very simple --

you point these things

in the direction of some nearby star system,

preferably one that you know has planets, right?