Mysterious Red Light flashing near ISS

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Mysterious Red Light flashing near ISS

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UFO sightings: Mysterious red light near International Space Station sparks rumours of extra terrestrial activities

The YouTube video was recorded from the live feeds from the ISS which shows a mysterious red dot flashing in outer space. It appears like a laser beam shot towards earth, Open Minds UFO Investigation reported.

Personaly do not believe in alien visitations however found this interesting. Could not find any posts relating to it. To me it looks like something being launched from Earth but who knows.

a reply to: Dabrazzo

A stage hand probably just accidentally dropped a red ball into the swimming pool

Just kidding, interesting video.

-MM

Looks like a laser from earth, perhaps hitting some space junk and causing a reflection.

According to OPALS mission manager Matthew Abrahamson, the light was generated from a new laser communications system.

"Four lasers from the ground station travel through the sky toward the space station. Under clear, dark background conditions, it's very easy for the payload to acquire the ground beacon. Daylight conditions have proven more challenging, but we are working on increasing capabilities during the day as well, through software enhancements," Abrahamson told Discovery News about the appearance of the mysterious red spot near the ISS.

End of story for me here.

I'm not to say that ISS haven't got its share of strange things videotaped near it...as did the STS missions. But this here looks pretty clear to me.

NVM

well it looks cool anyway. like the bat-signal.

Wait so we actualy have lasers capable of beaming crazy bat signals into space???

Pretty awesome to be fair.

Lol, So where do i buy these lasers on Ebay?

You know, so i can blind planes with an effeciency better than the common green laser. What ever that is. It is several times more powerful than any laser i'v seen, Heard, or read about.

Either this is an experiment,With the probability of causing problems with air traffic control aswell as planes. Or this is something else?

Well, there's really no secret to OPALS...

www.nasa.gov...

You know if it was us and this wasn't an experiment.

I'd expect advertising companies or better yet. People with lots of money and time to kill would turn the whole planet into a strobe like with this kind of technology.

Is there any report of any high powered lasers being tested?

And if so? Can we make it look like Earth is having a rave? With multipul lights like this.
We could easily make Earth look like we party hard. For all passerbyers to see.

We can call ourselves the Rave planet. Or rather, speaking on the bahalf of 2014-2015. The streams of red lights could reprisent the police world we live in. Our planet would be in hot presuit of mars. Woop Wooop PULL OVER MARS THIS IS THE EARTH LAW FORCE YOU ARE ORBITING DRUNK.

a reply to: Jelonek

Says the laser physically comes from the ISS. However.

In the case of this video. The laser is quite a distance away.

So scratch that idea.

The Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science tests the potential for using a laser to transmit data to Earth from space. Instead of being broadcast on radio waves, data is packaged onto beams of laser light and hardware on the International Space Station will point the laser to a receiver station on the ground. Radio waves transmission is limited by the speed that it can transfer data, but beaming information packages with lasers can greatly increase the amount of information transmitted over the same period of time.

Occam's Razor says swamp gas.

a reply to: AnuTyr

It also says:

The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), which is part of the JPL Phaeton early career employee hands-on training program, aims to demonstrate optical communications technology. This is accomplished by transferring a video from hardware onboard the ISS to our ground receiver at JPL’s Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) in Wrightwood, California. To aid the ISS investigation in accurately pointing the downlink laser to the ground telescope, a laser beacon is transmitted from the OCTL to the ISS investigation, which is tracked by the investigation as the ISS travels across the sky.

www.nasa.gov...

Idea unscratched.

Okay, I admit it. I'm an disinfo agent planted by NASA to derail the thread. I get paid 3 (three) dollars for every succesful coverup. Cheap, I know - but budget cuts get to everyone these days

On a serious note: Yes, it's OPALS. Yes, it looks like that. No, it isn't an alien craft this time. Sorry, not everything that happens in space is alien-related.

a reply to: DenyObfuscation

Why would the beam of the laser be visible in space?
Not to mention that OPALS used a 1550 nm (infrared) laser with a continuous beam.

a reply to: Jelonek

Abrahamson told Discovery News about the appearance of the mysterious red spot near the ISS.

Here is the article in Discovery News. Where does Abrahamson say that the red spot has anything to do with OPALS?
news.discovery.com...

a reply to: Phage

Why would the beam of the laser be visible in space?

AFAIK, it shouldn't be but I realize that I don't know everything.

Not to mention that OPALS used a 1550 nm (infrared) laser with a continuous beam.

Too far into IR for the image sensor to pick up?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Jelonek

Abrahamson told Discovery News about the appearance of the mysterious red spot near the ISS.

Here is the article in Discovery News. Where does Abrahamson say that the red spot has anything to do with OPALS?
news.discovery.com...

That story is from long before this allegedly occurred on Dec 5.

Is this guy making up stuff in this article? newsmaine.net...

a reply to: DenyObfuscation

Too far into IR for the image sensor to pick up?

I would say yes.

Is this guy making up stuff in this article?

Since he's providing the same Abrahamson quote that was in the Discovery article, yes. I would say he's just repeating what he read in other "articles" about the video, including the story of the Statue of Liberty "UFO". The same story that was in the ibtimes story about the ISS. The same story that claimed that Abrahamson said the light was a laser from the experiment.

a reply to: Phage

The uploader edited the vid to add the laser effect?

ETA: I see it's Streetcap's vid, so yes it very well might be faked.