You might think that the most likely place for a NASA astronaut to see an unidentified flying object would be while orbiting Earth or docking with the International Space Station, however one NASA astronaut says they came close to a UFO while flying their private plane over Texas instead.
NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao reports seeing a pair of “smooth” and “shiny” orbs flying above the U.S. back in 2023, reports Futurism. The ex-astronaut, who previously flew four Space Shuttle missions, reported coming face-to-face with the aerial anomalies while flying his private four-seat aircraft 9,000 feet over Houston, Texas.
Chiao claimed that two mysterious spheres, each around three feet in diameter, sped by him around 20 feet away from his own plane:
He first detailed the unusual encounter in an interview with NewsNation in December, and recently elaborated on the sighting in a follow-up with the New York Post — claims from a highly accomplished pilot and space traveler that add fuel to the fire of debates over unidentified objects in the skies.
“There was nothing around me other than the panhandle of Texas at nine thousand feet on this instrument flight plan and just suddenly these things appeared,” he told the publication.
“They came right at me,” he added.
The New York Post added that Chiao claimed the two orbs had “no visible means of propulsion,” further adding to the mystery of how they got there and where they were heading.
The claims made by the former astronaut align with declassified Pentagon footage that purports to show a UFO flying over a military base in the Middle East in April 2023. The footage, which was shared last year, sparked Chiao’s memory of the interaction and led him to talk about the experience.
While many claimed the vehicles seen in the Pentagon’s declassified footage were merely weather balloons or similar, Chiao isn’t so sure the craft he saw were of the same origin. In fact, while there’s no proof about where the craft came from, or if there even was a craft at all, Chiao has his own theories about where they originated, as the Post adds:
At a loss for any sort of explanation, Chiao is reduced to attributing the technology to the American military by way of default.
“That was my first thought, that this must be some secret military program but what the hell are they doing flying it where airplanes are operating, especially under instrument flight rules. Why wouldn’t they be in military airspace?,” the spacewalker wondered.
This doesn’t mean that Chiao’s time in space turned him into a fun sponge who denies the existence of extra terrestrial life. Rather, he just thinks military involvement is much more plausible in today’s climate.
That’s particularly true right now, as states on the East Coast of America deal with plagues of mysterious drones hovering above and other regions in the U.S. face secretive balloons floating into their airspace.
