Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998

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and below) as published with erroneous captions.
"Fawc:dt list" of astronaut sightings.
Geori;e t·awcett is a respected and
level-headed
UFO
researcher
in
Maiden,
North
Carolina.
But an
example of his work gives a different
impression:
"Gemini-XII: Jim Lovell and Edwin
Aldrin saw four UFOs linked in a row.
Both spacemen said the objects were
not stars" (quoted from The Edge of
Reality, Hynek & Vallee, 1975, page
64).
From
the
GT-12
Astronaut
Debriefing, page K/3.4, Lovell relates:
"During the last EVA we discarded, in
addition to the ELSE (life support
system), three bags. About 2, maybe
3 or possibly 4, orbits later at sunrise
condition, we looked out again and
saw 4 objects lined up in a ro,v and
they weren't stars I know. They must
have been these same things we tossed
overboard."
The
original distortion of this
entirely ordinary event, according to
the
Condon
Report,
is
the
responsibility of UFO wnter, John
Keel, Fawcett took it and embellished
it.
Another of Fawcett's favorites is
M~rcury-7: "Scott Carpenter reported
th<1t he had what looked like a good
shot of a saucer." E!sPwhere he
claimed
that
Carp,rnter
"look a
photograph of a classical saucer-shaped
UFO with dome that followed his
capsule."
~(._ pla.t,;:, J,l
In fact, the photographs s!iow an
entirr.ly ordinary object:
a space
balloon ejected from the capsule for
tracking practice. The balloon did not
inflate but spun in a limp oblong sack.
The flight schedule and the voice
transmissions confirm this unexciting
explanation-and confirm Fawcett's
fantasizing.
An example of the difficulty of
"disproving"
an
"astronaut
UFO
sighting" is the Mercury-9 case in
1963. Well established in the UFO
lore, the story claims that on the 15th
orbit, over Muchea, Australia, the
astronaut (Gordon Cooper) saw a
green object. More than one hundred
people at the tracking station saw the
bogie on a radar screen (this wasn't
Shot during Sky Lab Ill second manned Sky Lab
Flighl 263 day of 1973-1645 Zulu Time.
NASA Photo =sLJ-118-2140 (4 shots taken)
Listed as unrden1,r.ed ob1ect or satellite by NASA
Pho to E,·aluat,on Lab
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