By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-04 05:42:23 | Updated at 2025-01-06 08:40:58
2 days ago
The former NASA astronaut who nearly collided with a pair of metallic orbs while flying his plane remains befuddled by the mysterious objects, revealing to The Post they showed “no visible means of propulsion” when they whizzed by within 20 feet of his plane.
“They came right at me,” Dr. Leroy Chiao, who was the commander of Expedition 10, said of the “perfectly smooth” spheres he encountered while piloting his Grumman AA5BTiger in Texas last summer.
Chiao detailed the stunning experience in a lengthy interview that shed more light on the remarkably close call and expanded on his theory of orbs’ possible origin — though he’s still searching for answers.
The two objects were “10 feet to the left and 10 feet below” Chiao’s plane on a perfectly clear day — allowing the aviation expert a full view of the anomalous crafts that exhibited capabilities that challenged his ability to conventionally explain their existence.
“They were about 20 feet away,” Chiao recounted. “They were about three feet in diameter. One on top of the other.”
“I didn’t see any visible means of propulsion, so I don’t know what it would be,” a stumped Chiao told The Post. “You gotta have a jet engine or a propeller or something.”
The pilot emphasized he witnessed the orbs on a sunny, cloudless day with good visibly.
“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,” Chiao said, detailing safety measures and instruments pilots use to identify other planes and avoid catastrophic accidents.
“The ones I saw were smooth and shiny,” Chiao said.
The great American made this “smooth” observation in contrast to a widely circulated image of an orb released as part of a Pentagon report last year, which depicts an orb being covered in cresting points.
Those objects, captured on military radar in controlled airspace in Iraq, were deemed by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to be unexplainable and were rendered in the report as pointy metallic orbs.
“That’s what it made me think of. I wonder, ‘Gosh, I wonder if this is the same thing.’”
The mystery that followed the astronaut’s near-miss encounter has persisted.
“They were moving about the same speed as I was in the opposite direction. About 100-150 mph,” Chiao recounted.
The directed speed of the objects, which was apparent to Chiao, precludes them being accurately identified as mere balloons, and weather balloons would show on his flight radar, he said.
Chiao also said the flight characteristics of the orbs were unique. They did not cause an air disturbance so far as he could tell, something planes and other flying objects cause by virtue of their speed.
“If an airplane flew by me that fast, I’d feel its wake, it would have disturbed the air around my airplane.”
The commander says that the orbs passed him by in complete silence, making no noise as they zipped through the air.
Chiao said that at the time he was too surprised to realize what exactly was happening, but sees now that the one-in-a-million encounter could’ve instead led to his death.
“Obviously if I collided with them it would have been really bad,” Chiao said with a chuckle, adding, “No one would’ve known what happened to me.”
“They would probably attribute it to a bird strike or running into a big turkey buzzard or something,” he joked.
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.
Chiao rejected any otherworldly explanation for the objects — though he believes that there are other intelligences out there in space.
“I firmly believe there is other intelligence in the universe. I think it’s the height of arrogance to think that we’re the only intelligent life in this entire universe,” Chiao said, adding a major caveat: “The flip side of that is that we’ll never find each other because the universe is so vast.”
“So I have trouble believing that aliens have visited us,” Chiao said.
These beliefs make the reality and origin of the mechanics–bending orbs all the more quizzical.
“What could be the propulsion system? Just like the orb we saw in the predator video, what could make that thing move like that?”
“Its hard to imagine what kind of propulsion system would work,” Chiao said, speculating that it was not likely that a jet engine propulsion system was in the orb, letting out exhaust through a hole which he did not see.
Chiao has been flying since 1984 — and has owned his own small personal plane since 1999.
“In all my years of flying, nobody’s ever saw a UFO or something weird,” he said, later adding, “If I had been looking the other way I wouldn’t have seen ‘em. Wouldn’t have felt anything.”
