A former NASA astronaut who nearly collided with a pair of metal balls during a plane flight is still baffled by the mysterious object, saying the object “had no visible means of propulsion” while flying within 20 feet of the plane. “I didn't show it,” he told the Post.
“They came straight at me,” said Dr. Leroy Chao, Expeditionary Unit 10 commander, who encountered the “perfectly smooth” while piloting a Grumman AA5B Tiger in Texas last summer. He talked about the sphere.
Chao detailed the amazing experience in a lengthy interview, shedding further light on the amazing close call and expanding on his theory about the orb's possible origin, but he's still looking for answers.
The two objects were “10 feet to the left and 10 feet below” Chao's plane on a perfectly clear day. This allowed aviation experts to see the bigger picture of an unusual aircraft whose capabilities challenged the ability to explain its existence in traditional ways.
“They were about 20 feet apart,” Chao said. “They were about three feet in diameter. One on top of the other.”
“I don’t know what it will be because I didn’t see any visible means of propulsion,” a puzzled Chao told the Post. “We need a jet engine or a propeller or something.”
The pilot emphasized that he witnessed the orb on a clear, cloudless day with good visibility.
“On this instrument flight plan, there was nothing around me except the Texas Panhandle at 9,000 feet, and all of a sudden these things appeared,” Chao said, adding that the pilot identified other planes. and detailed the safety measures and instruments used to avoid catastrophic accidents.
“The ones I saw were smooth and shiny,” Chao said.
The great American made this “smooth” observation in contrast to the widely circulated image of a sphere published last year as part of a Pentagon report and depicting a sphere covered with vertices. .
The objects were detected by military radar in controlled airspace in Iraq and were deemed unexplained by the Pentagon's All Area Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which described them in a report as sharp metal balls.
“That's what got me thinking. I thought, 'Oh, I wonder if this is the same thing.'
The mystery that followed the astronaut's near-miss encounter remains.
“They were moving about as fast as I was moving in the opposite direction, about 160 to 150 miles per hour,” Chao said.
Because Mr. Chao had the indicated speed of the object, he was unable to accurately identify that it was just a balloon, and flight radar would show it as a weather balloon, he said.
Chao also said the orb's flight characteristics are unique. As far as he knew, they didn't create the kind of air turbulence that airplanes and other flying objects do by virtue of their speed.
“If the plane had been flying by me that fast, I would have felt its wake and the air around my plane would have been disturbed.”
According to the commander, the sphere passed in front of him in complete silence, with no sound as it flew through the air.
Chao said he was too surprised at the time to understand exactly what happened, but now believes the one-in-a-million encounter could have instead led to his death.
“Of course, if I had clashed with them, it would have been a big problem,” Chao said with a laugh, adding, “No one would have known what happened to me.”
“They probably think it was caused by a bird strike or a big turkey or something,” he joked.
At a loss for any explanation, Mr. Chao comes to the conclusion that the technology belongs to the US military in default.
“My first thought was that this must be some kind of secret military program, but what on earth is flying it where planes operate, especially under instrument flight rules? Why aren't they in military airspace?'' the spacewalker wondered.
Chao believes there are other intelligences in the universe, but rejects any otherworldly explanations for the object.
“I strongly believe that there are other intelligences in the universe, and I think it is the height of arrogance to think that we are the only intelligent life forms in this entire universe,” Chao said. He added an important warning: It's very vast. ”
“So it's hard to believe that aliens visited us,” Chao said.
These ideas make the reality and origins of how the sphere bends even more questionable.
“What's the propulsion system? What makes it move like that, like the sphere we saw in the Predator video?”
“It's hard to imagine what kind of propulsion system would work,” Chao said, adding that a jet engine propulsion system could be mounted on a sphere, emitting exhaust air through invisible holes. I guessed it was low.
Chao has been flying planes since 1984 and has owned his own small plane since 1999.
“In all my years of flying, no one has ever seen a UFO or anything strange,” he said, later adding. I wouldn't have felt anything. ”
