Salyut 6 UFO Sighting..interesting indeed

A little background on Salyut 6

Salyut 6 (Russian: Салют-6; English translation: Salute 6) was a Soviet orbital station. Launched on September 29, 1977, the station was the first of the 'second-generation' type of space station, possessing several revolutionary advances over the earlier Soviet space stations, which it resembled in overall design, most notably a second docking port where an unmanned Progress cargo spacecraft could dock and refuel the station. The launch of Salyut 6 allowed the Soviet space station program to evolve from short-duration to long-duration expeditions, and marked the beginning of the transition to multi-modular, long-term research stations in space.

From 1977 until 1982 Salyut 6 was visited by five long-duration crews and 11 short-term crews, including cosmonauts from Warsaw Pact countries. The very first long-duration crew on Salyut 6 broke a long-standing endurance record set on board the American Skylab station, staying 96 days in orbit. The longest flight on board Salyut 6 lasted 185 days. The fourth Salyut 6 expedition deployed a 10-meter radio-telescope antenna delivered by a cargo ship. After Salyut 6 manned operations were discontinued in 1981, a heavy unmanned spacecraft TKS spacecraft, derived from hardware left over from the cancelled Almaz military space station program and flown under the designation Cosmos 1267, was docked to the station as part of a hardware test. Salyut 6 was deorbited on July 29, 1982, almost five years after her launch.[1]

en.wikipedia.org...




Salyut 6
Credit - © Mark Wade

This report is news to me also and is one of those tantalising stories that invariably is difficult to prove as the only evidence is the testomony of the cosmonaut.

These situations are frustrating and always stall unless new evidence materialises, clearly the video footage is paramount and I feel that that kind of footage would be locked away indefinately by the Russian authorities.

There is of course the remote possibility that Vladimir Kovalyonok and Viktor Savinykh are seeking attention for some reason a little digging on these guys may be useful.

As regards the actions of these aliens after the star maps were displayed the first thing that came to mind was "follow me" however this does assume that they did not know the limited capabilities of Salyut 6 which is hard to swallow if they were an advanced race.

Of course they may have come to realise this and the close maneuvering may have been an invitation to board their craft and go somewhere else.

These are just idle musings and without further material data I fear this story will become mythos like so many others, I am happy though that at least I am aware of it now and thank the OP for posting, have a star






[edit on 5-4-2008 by sherpa]

After doing a little more digging I can only conclude at this point that the original story came from Pravda.

The source for the story given at www.ufoevidence.org... gives the date Aug 17, 2004.

When searching for this article I could only find this dated 16.08.2004:

The astronaut says he does not believe other astronauts when they say they have never seen anything unusual in space

Soviet astronaut, USSR Hero Vladimir Kovalenok spent 217 days of his life living in space. The astronaut does not exclude the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. “When I was working at the Salyut orbital station, I saw something strange in a porthole one day. The object was the size of a finger. I was surprised to see it was an orbiting object,” Kovalenko said at the press conference in Moscow on Friiday.

The astronaut added he called his partner Viktor Savinykh to take a look at the unidentified object in space. “It was hard to determine the size and the speed of an object in space. That is why I can not say exactly, which size it actually was. Savinykh prepared to take a picture of it, but the UFO suddenly exploded. Only clouds of smoke were left. The object split into two interconnected pieces. It was reminiscent of a dumb-bell. I reported about it to the Mission Control immediately,” the astronaut said.

Vladimir Kovalenok said they had not managed to photograph the object, Interfax reports.

”The Soviet press headlined the event widely. Soviet newspapers and magazines published a lot of articles and messages about it, but they were mostly critical articles. Journalists excluded the existence of the extraterrestrial reason,” Kovalenok was quoted as saying. The astronaut said nobody knows, what happened that day, when he saw the strange object in space. “It was probably a UFO, but it was definitely not mysticism – two people watched it at the same time,” said he.

When on Earth, Kovalenok learned specialists had registered considerable radiation emission the day the astronaut saw the object. “I do not believe it when astronauts say they have never seen anything extraordinary in space,” concluded Kovalenok

english.pravda.ru...

So the sources agree but clearly not the same story as that in wiki.

Question: where did wiki get this story because the sources quoted there disagree with it ?

Here is the comment from the discussion page :

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Portuguese article gives the May 14 1981 date, the www.ufoevidence.org... case article quotes Vladimir Kovalyonok's experience with a UFO and dates it May 5 1981. His observations are entirely different from that reported in the translation of the Portuguese article. There is no further documentation on the internet and to my way of thinking it sounds like the whole thing may have been made up in its entirety. Meanwhile I edited what I could in good faith. --User:Brenont 00:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)"

en.wikipedia.org...:Salyut_UFO_Sighting

So it would seem that the version of the story on wiki is entirely down to this one Portuguese article and uncorroberated.

For me the moral of the story is do not trust wiki blindly do your own research.

Here is more info on this. It shows the commander of the Salyut drawing sketches of the ufo, and som footage of a cigarshaped object i 92

www.youtube.com...

But no pics. Sigh. Somehow, the dog always eats the homework.

Good find. A hidden jewel, as it were.

I hope this gets researched more, though without the film, there's not much that can be done, really.

And To whomever thought interest was lacking because of some perceived American jealousies, I assure you, many of us couldn't care less where or who originates information. I suspect that the lack of language skills slowed the participation for many.

reply to post by skept!cal


I'd never heard of this (these) sightings before, either. It IS very interesting.

reply to post by NGC2736


I totally agree NGC, that's ridiculous to think because the information or happening didn't originate in the U.S. we wouldn't care.

I chose to ignore that comment, and let all the people who I knew would soon be posting from the U.S., prove him/her wrong.

and thanks Sherpa for all the background!

itisibrian LOL! I'am sorry to hear that though.
Great find! rutube.ru...

LateApexer313

"they said, it was about 40meters long, made of metal, had some openings, and some kind of wings. it flew near the russian spaceship, about 20 or 30meters distance. the pilot told the control station anbout the ufo. after return to earth, he made a report, and he was told to dont tell anybody of what happened. the video and the radio traffic was never released. only after the collapse of the udssr, the pilot has the feeling, to tell the story unpunished. its always still classified as an ufo."

Thank you very much for this translation!


riotact1

The OP original post was about the wiki talking about the sighting between May 14 and May 18, 1981, with cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalyonok and Viktor Savinykh.



Riposte

We should consider that the info about the Salyut 6 UFO in 1981 talks about a piece of film footage filmed by the cosmonaut. Nobody ever mentioned about Salyut UFO captured on video.
We have video capturing devices today. What they had in 1981 were film capturing devices.
If this piece of film is still preserved in its original form it might not have been encoded in any video format yet.



sherpa

As regards the actions of these aliens after the star maps were displayed the first thing that came to mind was "follow me" however this does assume that they did not know the limited capabilities of Salyut 6 which is hard to swallow if they were an advanced race.

Of course they may have come to realize this and the close maneuvering may have been an invitation to board their craft and go somewhere else.

These are just idle musings and without further material data I fear this story will become mythos like so many others, I am happy though that at least I am aware of it now and thank the OP for posting, have a star

Interesting that you say that!
The crafts immediate departure and arrival followed immediately after their response to an OK sign hand gesture by the astronauts, when they repeated this sequence 6 times. I must take note of the number 6.
1 turn of this sequence would not be enough to get their message through for "follow me".
From 2 up to 3, 4 and 5 turns of this sequence, would probably pass a different message to the cosmonauts than the intended, but 5 turns plus 1 more turn to show that a new cycle of communication is initiated with a context relevant to the former that was terminated and was interpreted as 5 from the aliens (5=number of fingers at each hand in the human physiology, cosmonauts used their 5 fingers to transmit a message that was successfully interpreted as confirmation for further contact, new cycles of messaging)

In the logic and fashion that the Soviet cosmonauts initiated first their initial contact, What the aliens probably expected was that the Soviet cosmonauts would probably initiate a space walk to board the aliens more capable craft to move to another more appropriate destination for the aliens, for a second cycle of contact to begin.
When that message failed, and the cosmonauts decided to talk with Morse code, no further "conversation" with the alien beings was successful.
The next day, the first thing the aliens did was to introduce the idea of a space walk to the cosmonauts, since, the prior day they had luck with their first thing they did in their encounter and that was to simply appear and wait inside their spaceship, before signal contact begin, this time their next chapter of intended actions was to simply stand with their suits near the Salyut 6 space station in the hope humans would follow the same action for further contact to be initiated.
So in order to follow a successful protocol of actions (prior day events) aliens probably waited for the cosmonauts to initiate contact first as it happened at day 1 IMO.

It could make sense, no?


sherpa

IMO I have to think that this, the dumb-bell object, was a larger vehicle that carried the 8 to 10 meters smaller spaceship near the vicinity of the Salyut 6 orbit.

What I've discovered with my research is that this dumb bell object probably displayed here:

from the link posted by itisibrian

Was THE SAME object the crew of Apollo 11 saw, (and Buzz Aldrin confirmed) to their trip to the moon!


Here is the object seen from inside Apollo 11!
I have even made a CGI model of this object 2 years back but I must search for it. It mostly resembles the sketch in the first picture which is the Russian sighting.

[/URL ]

If this is confirmed, you heard it here in ATS first!

Now notice another sketch by Vladimir Kovalyonok (the cosmonaut with the camera) the egg shaped object in the right in front of the large bell that holds another vehicle inside, might have been connected to the ship at the front and was detached later, also it could be with enhanced luminosity compared to the other parts of the dumb-bell!, we can see them all connected together in the Apollo 11 video here if my theory is correct! Also it would add more credibility to the Salyut 6 contact and prove Kovalyonok was not trying to pull something for personal benefits!

[URL=http://img232.imageshack.us/my.php?image=salyutdumbbellufoexplaikr8.jpg]

Buzz Aldrin confirming UFO contact with Apollo 11:
www.youtube.com...

Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

en.wikipedia.org...


Where is skept!cal the OP BTW?

[edit on 5-4-2008 by spacebot]
edited for thumbnails in images
[edit on 5-4-2008 by spacebot]
HTML is a pain in the ars...

[edit on 5-4-2008 by spacebot]

Awesome work SpaceBot!!!

It sure looks like the SAME object to me! Great find, great research!

It's still killing me that I think this WAS an event, if it actually happened as the Russian's say it did, where the occupants of this ship were actually willing to reach out and communicate and more...

And the Russians followed orders!! That just kills me!! I would have done the ole' static on the radio communique trick and said "Sorry, repeat, sorry you're breaking up!!" and kept trying to communicate with them

This whole thread is an awesome find and made greater with all the member research into it.

reply to post by LateApexer313


Thanks. I really appreciate your support to this important matter as I have to thank all the people participating including the OP, since this is an important piece that has to be researched further. I really hope this thread grows with more info and healthy speculation.

I knew I didn't spend so much time for nothing studying the Apollo 11 ufo video, since it gave me a peculiar feeling while studying how the craft appeared to be shaped. Another thing that gave me the same feeling was the story of I now identify as the Salyut sighting, that I have read in a old UFO magazine before some years, the description of the humanoid like beings (I now believe are androids) was really unexpected.
I am positive these two crafts are of the same type. This can open the door for out of the norm speculation about UFOs.
Whats more important it may pertain to an original presence in our neighborhood that, thankfully, is yet unexploited by disinformation agents.


[edit on 5-4-2008 by spacebot]

Also I am intrigued by what Vladimir Aksyonov another USSR astronaut says in this video Russian Officials get serious on U.F.O.s part 2 which is near the end of this second part and continues in the beginning of the third part.
He was a flight engineer for Soyuz 22 and Soyuz T-2, probably participated in supply missions for the Salyut 6 space station in 1976 and 1980 with the Soyuz vehicles.

www.spacefacts.de...

It seems he met the crew of the Salyut, the Soyuz 6 encounter describes, in space one or two months after the incident and probably had too some personal experience of strange events about the station by the way that he talks about.
Someone sometime must open the USSR space ufo encounters files because IMO we will not only discover original information, but also might be of a different philosophy than the mainstream we used to be feeding ourselves.

Yes SpaceBot I think it's an important story as well.

I am glad that rang some bells in your mind...it's nice IMO to hear that some sort of Androids or Robotic entities are piloting a craft for once, no offense to anyone but I am sick of hearing about "The Greys"...simply because they are described as non-caring cold entities etc that have their own agenda all the time etc...

Was nice to hear a story about a craft that actually seemed interested in communicating with us, via the Russian Cosmonauts. That's always how I pictured it when I pondered these things, that if our astronauts/cosmonauts reached out, I had always figured they would try to communicate back, whatever species of alien it is or was.

If it really happened, since I guess we'll never know unless we get the video

Until someone finds anything relevant in the form of a video I could go with sketches, detailed descriptions and the like and from where did that guy Vladimir Aksyonov got his beliefs?
Higher than alien? What that supposed to mean?

It is like he points us to ideas of super entities, probably using advanced robotics for search and exploration?

Did the behavior of the contacted aliens seem like they were feeling a bit adventurous like being a bit expendable?
Nothing like the typical scared Grey midget types or the other neurotic Nordics having severe superiority complexes eh?

sorry for the delay and not being here for any posts..me personally i dont have a computer at my house and research a lil here and there while at work shhhhhhh dont tell hahaha ...but on a serious note this is awesome guys so much more information than i could delve into myself since im not the most computer handy person...im sifting through most of it right now and am completely in awww :O lets keep it up and crack this...gotta be a video, if we get to see it thats another question...again thank you and ill be posting more info as i stumble upon it

Good Day
Skept!cal

I think this was debunked here some years ago, if I remember correctly the debunker found that either the cosmonaut was never in the russian space program and/or that there was no such space mission at the claimed time. I tried to find the old article, but to no avail.

well the name of the cosmonaut definitley checks out to be a russian astronaut so thats not the case...now if its true thats another story, but im positive the names provided are Russian astronauts...anyone that can find out if this is indeed a hoax please provide the evidence for i will not waste anymore of anyones time on this if that is true...I just thought this was a pretty good case to look into considering its dealing w/ actual astronauts

Good Day
Skept!cal

I am reposting this part of my last post because of a faulty wiki link.

The link I have posted below is now to the wiki Salyut 6 Sighting page and the extract is under the discussion tab of that page.

So the sources agree but clearly not the same story as that in wiki.

Question: where did wiki get this story because the sources quoted there disagree with it ?

Here is the comment from the discussion page :

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Portuguese article gives the May 14 1981 date, the www.ufoevidence.org... case article quotes Vladimir Kovalyonok's experience with a UFO and dates it May 5 1981. His observations are entirely different from that reported in the translation of the Portuguese article. There is no further documentation on the internet and to my way of thinking it sounds like the whole thing may have been made up in its entirety. Meanwhile I edited what I could in good faith. --User:Brenont 00:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)"

en.wikipedia.org...

So it would seem that the version of the story on wiki is entirely down to this one Portuguese article and uncorroberated.

Originally posted by Acharya
I think this was debunked here some years ago, if I remember correctly the debunker found that either the cosmonaut was never in the russian space program and/or that there was no such space mission at the claimed time. I tried to find the old article, but to no avail.

Well according to this list of astronauts Vladimir Vasiliyevich Kovalyonok was a member of the Soyuz T-4

www.spacefacts.de...

launch the dates from 12.03. - 26.05.1981

Soyuz is the main title given to the fleet of launch vehicles (still used to today in advanced versions) and Salyut is the name given to the space station (decommisioned)

Dates match the wiki info.

reply to post by sherpa


What about the videos of him describing what he saw that are linked in this thread?
Most are either untranslated Russian, one is in German and another with a narrator that translates what is described in the movie.

I have to come back to this thrad in a later date because i don't have much time atm.

We need to keep looking for this video if it is somewhere.

[edit on 7-4-2008 by spacebot]

[edit on 7-4-2008 by spacebot]

reply to post by sherpa


good investigative work sherpa...You are truly an asset to ATS ...So werid wonder where Wiki did get this info...This just keeps getting more and more mystified each time i come back...

Good Day
Skept!cal

reply to post by kilad


AWESOME video!!!...thanks for posting