The flight of STS-96 began with the liftoff of Space Shuttle Discovery from Launch Complex 39B, Kennedy Space Center, on 27 May 1999 at 6:50 AM EDT (10:50 GMT).

The mission to the new International Space Station was named ISS Flight 2A.1. It was devoted to stocking supplies aboard, and an EVA ( Extra Vehicular Activity or spacewalk ) installing a Russian made exterior crane known as "Strela" ( Russian for "Arrow" ).

The Crew did a fine job, meeting all the goals set for them. The flight lasted just over nine and a half days, landing safely back at Kennedy Space Center, on Runway 15, at 2:03 AM EDT (6:03 GMT) on 6 June 1999.

At this time, ISS was uninhabited, and would remain so for well over another year, the First Expedition Crew arriving 1 November 2000. In Spring 1999, ISS consisted of just two modules, the Russian Zarya (FGB Russian acronym for Functional Cargo Block - top module at right), and the American Unity Node (lower module at right).

This event took place on 3 June, 1999 east of New Zealand. The time at Mission Control, Houston, was in the wee hours of the morning. The Crew were asleep. Surface time, below Discovery, was early night. On orbit, the Sun was just about to set. The Shuttle payload bay camera was pointed east, toward the ship's vertical tail. Off the tail could be seen a reddish, glowing orb. This orb was pulsating slowly, and hovering in a fixed position relative to the Shuttle. During the entire time of this incident, the object never moved in any direction. The sun went below the horizon, and the Shuttle's tail disappeared into darkness.

The object, however, remained. This strongly suggests that the object was self luminous. It's lack of relative motion not only suggests that it was in the same orbit as Discovery, but that it was NOT astronomical in nature. The Moon, Planets, and Stars display motion relative to the orbiting Shuttle.

Please bear in mind that the Sun was behind the camera, "over the shoulder" if you will. This shows us that the object was actually deeper into the night than Discovery herself, precluding this thing being ice or debris illuminated by the Sun. After a few minutes observing this object, controllers at Houston cut the feed.

Why the feed was cut with such an interesting object in view, one can only guess.

A fairly extensive visual presentation has been prepared for you to see below. First an orienting frame to show where Discovery was at the time of this event.

This is one of the emptiest places on Earth. It is virtually devoid of inhabited islands, and there are almost no shipping lanes. The region is also the preferred location for dumping spacecraft and satellites, which are of no further use, during controlled reentry. This is where the remains of Mir Space Station lie at the bottom of the sea today.

Above is an animated GIF of a portion of the event. This comprises about 60 seconds out of several minutes. That 60 seconds was speeded up to 10 times normal speed, and thirteen frames captured from the resulting 6 seconds. So this is not real time speed. To reproduce that for you would require hundreds of megabytes, and it not practical for a web presentation.

But we do get the gist of what happened. The object was "out there" beyond the vertical tail of Discovery. We can see that the Sun sets, but the object remains. This is virtual proof that it is self luminous.

The Hovering Orb is the first incident from STS-96. It is also possibly connected with the next event. The Flyby, which took place just one orbit, and 1.5 hours later. In addition, The Flyby happened in close proximity to this location on the globe.

The event described on this page is also reminiscient of The McCool Sighting from STS-107 in January 2003. In that case, the Shuttle Pilot reported an object moving WITH his spacecraft.

This animation is a 400% blow-up of the original tape sequence. Please note that the anomaly now presents a pulsating oval shape, very much like the object seen an hour and a half later in The Flyby.

© 2005 Heavens-Above

We have here a whole-sky chart obtained from Heavens-Above.com, for Aukland New Zealand at roughly the same hour as the event. We have to allow for the fact that Discovery and the Station were many hundreds of miles to the east when the object was seen. Problem is, there are no fixed points in the Central Pacific Ocean for which to extract a chart at the exact time on the ground.

There was no Moon in the sky at the time of the event, and Venus was on the western horizon, 180 degrees away from the field of view to the east. Mars is far to small and dim to have been a factor. As for stars, it is a demonstrable fact that the color cameras aboard shuttles are not sensitive enough to register stars, and planets. It's certain that there were no celestial objects in the sky which not only pulsated, but was also oval shaped. There also no man-made satellites or spacecraft on the same orbit as the Shuttle/Station complex, let alone SELF-LUMINOUS man-made craft. So we are left with an anomaly.

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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. He also remotely operates the helmet cameras in space suits. 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