nasa-uap-d7-skylab-technical-crew-debriefing-1973.pdf

BEA/J. Grinnell

JSC-08053

# SKYLAB 1/2 TECHNICAL CREW DEBRIEFING

JUNE 30, 1973

PREPARED BY

TRAINING OFFICE

CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION

![img-0.jpeg](img-0.jpeg)

NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its release to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, Texas

KERWIN (CONT'D)
Unusual or Unexpected Visual Phenomenon. We saw light flashes. I think all of us saw them. I saw them most often when I was in the sack at night with my eyes closed but awake naturally. They tended to wax and wane in frequency. Someone asked me if that was in conjunction with the South Atlantic anomaly. It may have been. I didn't have the pad with me at that time and I don't know. They were numerous at times - two or three per minute.

CONRAD
Some of them to me were a spot or sunbursts. Some were streaks. The streaks, in my case, were less frequent than the bursts. Most of them…

CONRAD Sometimes I'd be lying there with my eyes half closed, and I'd see a fire sensor wink.

KERWIN And you'd have to be careful that you weren't confusing that with the fire flash. Once you've seen a few of each, there is question of which is which. They're not an hallucination.

KERWIN We didn't feel it was operationally necessary for anybody to know about it right now.

WEITZ I had a couple that I thought were cosmic particles. I saw an entrance streak and an exit streak.

CONRAD Yes, I did too.

WEITZ Where, bing-bing, it seemed like it was one side of the eyeball, and then the other sid…

JSC-08478

# SKYLAB 1/3
## TECHNICAL
## CREW DEBRIEFING

### PREPARED BY
### TRAINING OFFICE
### CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION

NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its release to persons outside the U.S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.

![img-1.jpeg](img-1.jpeg)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
Houston, Texas
OCTOBER 4, 1973

BEAN
I did too. The sack would move over in the corner.

LOUSMA
Things we saw out the window.

GARRIOTT
For example, we saw that satellite about a week before splash-down. That was one of the most unusual things that we saw and I guess Jack noticed it looking out the window. This bright reddish object was out there and we tracked it for about 5 or 10 minutes. It was obviously a satellite in a very similar orbit to our own. It was rotating and had a period of almost exactly 10 seconds because you could see the brightness vary with that period. We followed it until sunset and it went out of sunl…

7-5

BEAN
You bet. We never saw it again. You'd think we would have seen it the next night or it would cycle by another time. Maybe it did and we weren't looking out the window.

LOUSMA
You might point out that it never did take the shape of an object but it was always brighter than any other star or planet in the night sky. It was much brighter.

BEAN
We tried monitors and everything on it but we could never make it into anything other than a bright light.

LOUSMA
In doing T002, I had on other occasions, at least once or twice, seen other satellites although they appeared as star points of li…

20.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS

LOUSMA
Let's talk about visual sightings. Any comments on countdown.
You saw your way to the booster or you didn't see that.
Visual sighting no problem there.

BEAN
You might want to talk about the visual sightings on that
orbit when Owen and Jack saw the satellite.

LOUSMA
Yes, let's go through countdown. Any visual sightings on
countdown that were significant? We saw the swing arm go
away and all that kind of thing.

Powered Flight: I watched the booster protector cover go
off and lots of flashes and debris and everything in every
separation, but that's all normal. Dur…

GARRIOTT (CONT'D)
a reddish hue to it, even though it was well above the horizon. The light from the Sun was not passing close to the Earth's limb at the time. We observed it for about 10 minutes prior to sunset. It was slowly rotating because it had a variation in brightness with a 10-second period. As I was saying, we observed it for about 10 minutes, until we went into darkness, and it also followed us into darkness about 5-seconds later. From the 5- to 10-second delay in it's disappearance we surmised that it was not more than 30 to 50 nautical miles from our location. From it's original p…