At 5:42 AM CST (11:42 GMT), on the morning of 8 March 2001, Space Shuttle Discovery lit her mighty rockets and lifted off from the wetlands of Launch Complex 39B, Kennedy Space Center Florida. STS-102 spent the next 44 hours chasing the International Space Station, making rendezvous on 10 March. Docking to ISSy occured at 12:38 AM CST (8:38 GMT). The Crew of STS-102, along with the incoming ISS Expedition 2 Crew, were greeted by the ISS Expedition 1 Crew when the hatches were opened. All were rung aboard, in fine Naval tradition, by station Commander Bill Shepherd.

The primary purpose of ISS Assembly Flight 5A.1 was ISS Expedition Crew exchange. The first crew was going home, and the fresh second crew taking over for their increment. The Italian contribution to the ISS program is the MPLM, of which there are three. On this flight, the Leonardo MPLM "moving van" was employed for the first time. Carrying nearly 15 tons of supplies, the largest portion of the cargo was composed of instruments and equipment for bringing the Destiny Laboratory Module up to function. The Destiny Module had been delivered just a month earlier aboard STS-98.

Two EVAs (Extra Vehicular Activity or spacewalk) were carried out by Astronauts Andy Thomas, Susan Helms, Paul Richards, and Jim Voss. Both EVAs were successful, and included work on the MPLM to prepare it for docking to PMA-3. The spacewalks also accomplished preparation work for ISS Assembly Flight 6A, to come later.

STS-102 landed safely at Kennedy Space Center Runway 15 on 21 March 2001 at 1:33 AM CST (7:33 GMT). The Crew of Discovery flawlessly accomplished all of their assigned goals. Total flight duration was 12 days 19 hours 52 minutes.

STS-102 was the Shuttle flight which ended up inspiring Project P.R.O.V.E. The event which spawned the idea for the project was "The Washington Sequence". 

This event happened on 18 March. It was the same date as the "Night Fuzzy" discussed on another page. The happenings which concern us here took place whilst the robotic arm was being used to stow the MPLM back in its cradle in Discovery's payload bay. There seems to have been something, or someone, watching the proceedings, who wasn't invited.

The INCO was casting about rapidly, apparently trying to find a view that was safe from the anomaly. In the end, he failed. The anomaly was seen three times in about one and one-half minutes. The camera view settled on one "clean" view for several minutes, before the downlink was cut altogether. That's NASA's standard operating procedure in cases of anomalous activity in the vicinity of Shuttles, or the Space Station.

What this anomaly is remains a mystery. It's not the Moon. It's not a star, or planet. These move in what appear, to the eye, to be straight lines across the sky, just as in the night sky on Earth. This difference is that on orbit, celestial objects cross the sky in 45 minutes or less, because spacecraft travel at 17,500 miles per hour, circling the globe in just over 90 minutes.

It's not ice or debris. Those move around quite a bit, and are normally not even visible at night, due to the lack of illumination. This object appears to be self-luminous, as have been so many over the years.

Our visual examination will include seven still frames, and an animated GIF composed of 26 individual frames. All frames were captured from the original raw video tape recorded "live" from NASA Select TV broadcast.

Let's have a look at the first of 7 still frames marked and labelled to help you understand what we are observing here.

Note the camera at the bottom of the picture, next to the robotic arm. This is the camera which garnered the view [of the anomaly hanging out in space] for us...Twice! So, if it was still in it's static position, it would be "over our shoulder" from this perspective.

Now that you should be familiar with what is to come, we will finally take a few moments to study the animated GIF which pulls all these views together. The GIF will attempt to reproduce the sequence of events for you just as they happened in real time. The animation runs about six times faster than the actual footage, but it's a pretty good facsimile of what took place that night.

Here we have a 250% enlargement of the first appearance of anomaly #1. Notice how it shimmers and goes through rapid color changes.

This animation is a 250% blow-up of the second anomaly. This one seems to have an "aura" or "field" surrounding a thin, cigar or disk-on-edge, shape. What these objects might have been is unknown. They definately fall into the category of Unidentified Flying Objects.

The debunkers will surely dispute this, but they dispute everything. Appearances CAN be telling. If you have learnt nothing else from reading these pages, it's that NASA is hiding something! The sheer number of anomalous objects revealing themselves to the eye over the years, show that something is going on. Of that, there is no doubt. What that "something" IS remains unclear, but those who are actually being depended upon to do the hiding are only human. There are errors and mistakes...indeed, some of the anomalies are simply too fast for the censors to deal with. What this bodes for the future is likely an ever DECREASING amount of live downlink television available to US, the public who pay for everything.

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At all times during this incident, the camera was under the control of the INCO in Houston Mission Control.

(INCO - INstrument & Communication Officer - The man in Houston Mission Control Center who is responsible for operating the Shuttle payload bay, and robotic arm, cameras. In the case of ISS, this officer is referred to as the CATO - Communications And Tracking Officer. In both cases, these persons CONTROL everything which is PERMITTED to go out on broadcast to the public. It is a commonly believed falacy that the cameras are operated by Astronauts & Cosmonauts on the Shuttles, and Space Station. Very little camera work is done by the crews. They're way too busy for that.)

At the end of the day, it's up to YOU to draw your own conclusions.

© 2005 Jeff Challender