Skylab UFO Sightings (1973–1974)

Background

Skylab was America's first space station, launched in May 1973 and occupied by three crews between May 1973 and February 1974. Each crew underwent a technical debriefing with NASA's Johnson Space Center. Most of the debriefs were routine engineering reviews, but several contained a section on "unusual or unexpected visual phenomena," which is where the UFO-related remarks appear. For decades these transcripts were known mainly to researchers who had obtained them through FOIA requests. Their wider release came in 2026, when the Pentagon's first declassified UAP batch included them.

The reports

The Skylab 2 crew (commander Charles Conrad, science pilot Joseph Kerwin and pilot Paul Weitz) described repeated light flashes. In his June 1973 debriefing, Kerwin said the flashes "tended to wax and wane" in frequency, at times two or three per minute, and that all crew members saw them, including when their eyes were closed. Conrad described a "spot," "sunbursts" and "streaks," while Weitz reported "cosmic particles" with an entrance streak and an exit streak.

The Skylab 3 crew (Owen Garriott, Alan Bean and Jack Lousma) reported the most specific sighting. Garriott described a rotating, bright reddish object outside the station that the crew tracked for roughly ten minutes, until Skylab passed into Earth's umbra. The object's brightness cycled about every ten seconds, and the crew estimated it was 30 to 50 nautical miles away. The debriefing is dated 4 October 1973. Garriott said the object was "obviously a satellite" in a very similar orbit, but added that no one had ever identified it. Several photographs were taken.

In a February 1974 interview, Gerald Carr, commander of Skylab 4, said the flashing lights could have been pieces of Skylab or other satellites, while still finding it interesting that other objects were nearby.

Explanations and disputes

The astronauts themselves offered ordinary explanations: debris from the station, satellites and changes in sunlight. NewsNation, summarising the 2026 release, noted that the transcripts contain no "smoking gun" moment. The most detailed skeptical analysis came from space journalist James Oberg, who in Skeptical Inquirer (1978) and later essays argued that the reddish object was most likely a piece of debris or a satellite, and that the anomalies in the clearest Skylab 3 photograph were photographic artifacts. Ufology researcher Bruce Maccabee challenged the satellite explanation, citing the object's apparent size, its orbital behaviour, the absence of corroboration in NORAD tracking records, and the difficulty of explaining its reddish colour through simple scattering.

The dispute rests largely on interpretation. The debriefings establish that the crews reported unusual sights and that NASA recorded them. They do not establish what the objects were, and no follow-up investigation was published.

Significance

The Skylab reports are often cited alongside the Gemini and Apollo astronaut sightings as evidence that space crews have encountered unexplained phenomena. Their inclusion in the Pentagon's declassification batch gave them a new audience. Historians of the space programme generally treat them as examples of how orbital debris, satellites and sunlight glints can be mistaken for unidentified objects by observers with no reference frame and no time to study what they saw. Ufologists treat the same transcripts as evidence that NASA recorded objects it never explained. The record is solid as to what was said and recorded; the identity of the objects remains open.

The Skylab episode also shows how archival release changes the debate. For most of the program's life, the transcripts were available only through FOIA and to a small community of researchers. Their publication alongside other government files means the original interviews can now be read in full rather than through secondhand summaries.