NASA Photo Features UFO Disk Flying Near Atlantis Shuttle, Expert Claims

KEY POINTS

A UFO expert spotted a mysterious object near the Atlantis shuttle
The expert believes the object is a UFO
This isn't the first time a UFO was spotted near Atlantis during a mission

A UFO expert claimed to have spotted a mysterious object flying near the Atlantis Space Shuttle in one of NASA’s photos. According to the expert, the agency mistakenly labeled the strange object featured in its photo.

Scott Waring of ET Data Base found the photo as he was browsing the galleries of the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The site features photos taken during NASA’s various missions. The photo that caught Waring’s attention was taken during the STS-61B mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

STS-61B served as the 23^rd Space Shuttle mission. It was officially launched on Nov. 26, 1985, with the objective of deploying communication satellites in space.

As seen in the photo taken from Atlantis, a circular disk can be seen floating near the spacecraft. Zooming in on the image would reveal that the object has a perfectly circular shape with a dome-like feature at its center.

In NASA’s photo, the object was labeled as “Satellite Deployment,” which coincides with the main objective of the STS-61B mission. However, for Waring, the object was mistakenly labeled by the agency. He said that in other photos, he found Black Knight Satellites that were also labeled inaccurately.

“I found what I believe to be a UFO passing below the shuttle Atlantis while in Earth’s orbit,” he wrote on a blog post. “The photo labels the object as a satellite, but I have found other UFOs in this archive including the Black Knight Satellites which went viral in 2011 and are known by every UFO researcher in the world.”

Waring noted that this isn’t the first time that a mysterious object was spotted flying near Atlantis. Back in 2006 during the shuttle’s STS-115 mission, the spacecraft’s landing was delayed after a UFO was spotted in between Earth and Atlantis, Space.com reported.

Although experts from NASA were not able to properly identify the object, many of them suggested that it could be a piece of ice or a discarded component from the shuttle. The agency was able to resume with Atlantis’ landing procedures after the mysterious object began to drift away.