As a government organization, NASA has been the target of many UFO cover up conspiracies. Since NASA is funded by the government, they are ultimately the government’s employees. However, budget cuts and lack of confidence from their employers make it clear that their bosses are not too happy with them. NASA would love to find definitive proof about extra terrestrial life and UFOs in order to get more public support and more funding.
UFOs have been seen by NASA test pilots and astronauts almost from the start of NASA’s existence. The infamous 1969Apollo 11 moon landing also had UFO sightings. Some of this information has been reportedly lost, which certainly seems suspicious but was most likely due to basic bungling on the part of overworked and underpaid employees.
Buzz Aldrin, one of the Apollo moon astronauts, claims to have seen UFOs during the mission. There certainly were indications of lights that seem to have lit up without any apparent reason. Aldrin only publicly admitted in 2006 that he saw UFOs during that mission, although there had been talk since 1970 that he had seen something (it even made Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! book on UFOs, so at the time it was already considered nearly common uncommon knowledge)
NASA and astronauts have an agreement not to try and mention any UFO sightings if they know that they are on public feeds. This was especially true of the first moon landing, when seemingly the whole human population was holding their breath in front of a TV or radio. This was because NASA did not want to start any panic (should a UFO sighting turn out to be true or false). Also, they wanted the focus of the mission to just be getting to the moon and back, which was enough of a problem in and of itself without having to try to prove the existence of UFOs on top of it.
Amateur ham radio operators are credited with the earliest knowledge that astronauts saw UFOs or something they definitely couldn’t figure out. And astronauts are not usually known to give into panic or to be unfit for the rigors of space travel. Former NASA employees have corroborated these stories, saying that astronauts definitely saw ships as well as strange lights.
Apparently, sightings of UFOs became so common in NASA missions that they were given their own code name: Santa Claus. That code word was thought to be first used during Mercury missions of the early 1960’s.
NASA, to its credit, has been good about letting a lot of its pictures and films go public. Many of these images are blurry and inconclusive. They usually have a certain elegance and charm, though. One of the most interesting is of a huge metal sphere hovering just over the Earth’s atmosphere taken from the shuttle Atlantis.
