BLUEBOOKSource record archive

Chronicle year

1973

1973-06-01 / Skylab space station, low Earth orbit

Excerpts from three NASA Skylab technical crew debriefings, dated June 30, 1973, October 4, 1973, and February 22, 1974, record crew observations of light flashes, a bright reddish rotating object, and flashing lights outside the station. Science Pilot Joseph Kerwin reported that all three Skylab 2 crew members saw light flashes, possibly linked to the South Atlantic anomaly. Science Pilot Owen Garriott reported that the Skylab 3 crew tracked a bright reddish rotating satellite in a very similar orbit for 5 to 10 minutes; Garriott stated no one ever explained its identity.

1973-01-08 / High galactic latitudes (North Galactic Pole and South Galactic Pole)

At the Apollo 17 Crew Debriefing for Science on January 8, 1973, at Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Dick Henry, co-investigator on the ultraviolet experiment, reported that the UV spectrum observed at high galactic latitudes resembled the spectrum of a hot star, but no hot stars were within the field of view.