NASA Astronaut Claims He Saw Something “Alien-Like” While In Space

Space is one of those subjects that equally fascinates us and terrifies us in kind. It’s vast and difficult to explore, and the consequences of stumbling on something that we shouldn’t are almost too high to confront. Still, humans have made an industry out of space exploration since the sixties, and one astronaut has some wild stories to tell.

Humans Like Space

Space has fascinated humans for millennia. Astronomy is one of the oldest physical sciences, after all, and the practice of using stars and planets for theory, personality, and exploration has existed as long as humans could look up at the sky.

The push for exploration of space is much more recent, though. The early days of exploration were pushed by competition between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, a period of time that has come to be known as the “Space Race.”

Early Days of the Space Race

The space race was driven by the development of nuclear weapons. After the success of the Manhattan Project, the conversation about offense and defense in wartime left land, and both the Soviet Union and the United States turned their focus to controlling the air.

The first human-made object into space, the Sputnik 1, launched in October of 1957, originating out of the Soviet Union. This was a landmark for this initial period of space exploration, closely followed by the United States’ successful Moon landing in July of 1969.

Milestones for Space

Since the 60’s, there have been dozens of missions that have been launched into space, some containing humans and others not. The completion of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011 marked another significant leap in space exploration development.

Since the ISS was completed, though, many of the plans for humans to further explore outer space have been in flux, at least as far as the United States goes. Plans that have been proposed have been denounced as under researched or underfunded, which has led the push for space exploration development from the private sector.

But What About Aliens?

Despite the hurdles that space exploration has faced in the recent decades, it is still something that NASA and governments from all over the world have hotly pursued. It’s an iteration of the oldest game in the world, to see who can make the most accomplishments first.

And, of course, one of the biggest questions that comes out of research from NASA and human space exploration itself is the question of otherworld life forms. Humans have wondered about aliens for years, with blogs and TV shows and documentaries dedicated to the question, and one NASA scientist may have shed some light on the subject.

An Astronaut Tells All

Leland Melvin, a former astronaut from NASA, revealed through a tweet that he posted in 2018 that he may have, during his time on the ISS for NASA, actually witnessed a potential organic life form while out in space.

Melvin is an engineer who served on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis as a mission specialist, and again in several other missions for NASA. He began working for NASA in 1989, and was selected as an astronaut in June of 1998 in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch.

A Remarkable Space Career

Melvin is a remarkable individual for the fact that over the course of his career at NASA, he logged over 565 hours in space over various missions. That’s approximately 23 1/2 days in total that he spent not on Earth, which is a remarkable feat for any one person.

During that time, his job as an engineer required Melvin to go on space walks outside the station. Space walks are a dangerous part of being an astronaut, given that they require a delicate balance of ingenuity and careful planning to pull off without a hitch.

Melvin Shares the Dirt

Evidently, during one of his adventures out in space – though he doesn’t specify whether he was “walking” outside the station or not, Melvin saw something that gave him pause. Understandably, like many people, being out in space had him considering the reality of aliens, as many of us do.

In 2018, an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, reached out to Melvin, asking him what his opinion was on the existence of intelligent alien life in the universe beyond our solar system. They went to specifically ask if he’d ever seen any UFO’s, and Melvin responded.

A Bombshell of a Tweet

Melvin stated in the tweet that he had never seen anything that he would classify as a UFO either in space or on the ground, but that doesn’t mean that he never saw anything, ever. He then went on to state that he thought that he’d seen something “organic/alien like” floating out in space near the payload bay.

He then explains that they reached out to NASA to discover what it might be, and they claimed that it was a piece of ice that had broken off of the Freon hoses. Still, he said that it appeared translucent, curved, and organic looking, and finished the message off with an alien emoji.

The Question of Aliens

Whether or not Melvin truly saw something organic out in space, it gives us cause to wonder. The quest for alien life is a hot button research topic at NASA and other space exploration agencies around the world, and likely will continue to be for some time.

Of course, the question of what to do once alien life is discovered is up in the air. Do we leave them alone, unless they approach us? Will they be hostile, like so many fictional alien races that have powered film franchises? Until we have definitive answers, we’ll all continue to be stuck wondering.