NASA OOPS!

[Tinman57]

[ Perhaps NASA posted a shot of something they weren't supposed to have got a shot of?]

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/QuickView.pl?directory=ISD&ID=STS61C-31-2

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[40hz]

I'm gonna guess it's the "nonexistent" SR-91 Aurora. It has the correct footprint.

[attachthumb=#]

[4wd]

My guess is it's a piece of the Monolith that's fallen into near Earth orbit. 

more rational

Artifact from a rather poor joining of multiple images.

[SeraphimLabs]

That is an odd one.

Though I would think if it was the SR-91 it would not have been released. NASA images have to be reviewed for declassification before public release, so such an image would almost certainly have been rejected at that point.

[Rover]

or it could be someones mouse pointer. 

Just cuz they work @ NASA, doesn't mean the know how to drive a mouse. 

[Renegade]

<seriousness mode="off">

Oh, c'mon everyone! Pull your heads out of the sand!

It's an alien invasion scout ship. It's probably sending mind control rays at this very moment to convince you that this post is pure nonsense! And, the weaker minded ones will succumb to its insidious mind control attacks!

</seriousness>



SOMETHING is going on. What? Who knows. There's always some way to explain away anything that doesn't fit into the mainstream narrative, and that will always trump any kind of questioning or inquisitiveness, because only "conspiracy theorists" ever question anything, and as we "know", all conspiracies are false. 

In the meantime, it sure would be interesting to know what that thing is. It's not like there are a lot of possibilities when you get up to those kinds of altitudes.

As for NASA releasing the picture, I kind of wonder there... Why would you need to "declassify" a photo from orbit? Is truth something that requires sanitation?

[f0dder]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Artifact from a rather poor joining of multiple images.

My guess too. If it were an aircraft, it would be "kinda big".

[Renegade]

Ok, here's a fun conspiracy theory...

Having a patchwork of photos, NASA edits them into place, but due to rotation, an odd triangular portion in one assembled photo is left blank.

Some mischevious NASA officials decide to release the photo, knowing that conspiracy theories (like this one) will pop up all over the place and they'll get a good laugh.

A betting pool is formed, and officials place bets and take odds on whether the most popular conspiracy theories will be about aliens, secret military aircraft, or practical jokes and betting pools at NASA.

[40hz]

My guess too. If it were an aircraft, it would be "kinda big".

Most likely. But where's the fun in that. Half of UFO watching is the pleasure of pulling answers out of your butt with zero in the way of proof to substantiate them.

That's why I enjoy a good conspiracy argument. They're creativity stimulators. Some of the most amazing speculative fiction concepts get generated during a good 'serious' conspiracy discussion. I just sit back and listen. I usually come away with a handful of clever plot ideas for stories after an hour of that. .

More seriously, they now have software that can determine whether an image has been 'photoshopped' or not. All it would take is for everything presented as evidence to be run through it. That should cut down on about half the para-nonsense going on these days.

But where's the fun in that?

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[paulobrabo]

Judging from the film strip info below it doesn't look as this was put together from several images. But then the left and bottom sides of the triangle seem too perfectly aligned, don't they?

[paulobrabo]

Heh, ignore me, there's another photo. The truth is out there.

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/QuickView.pl?directory=ISD&ID=STS61C-31-3



I'm pretty sure it's swamp gas, though. Or Venus. 

[40hz]

...or Venus.

Well... it is a delta, so...maybe!  

But it could also be the cursor if whoever took the screenshot had the "capture cursor" option on. 

[crabby3]

My guess is it's a piece of the Monolith that's fallen into near Earth orbit. 

I'm with you 4wd

[SeraphimLabs]

Actually now that I think about it, it could be just another orbiting satellite, or a piece of a satellite that got damaged.

That would account for the shape and size- it's only a few km away from the ISS where this was likely photographed at.

I'll forward this to my contact in NASA. She can probably tell at a glance what it is they picked up.

[40hz]

I'll forward this to my contact in NASA. She can probably tell at a glance what it is they picked up.

But how do you know she hasn't been already compromised or is working as an agent for the {Area-51 aliens|Illuminatus|Church of Subgenius|Warren Belch Society}? Or even *gasp* The Mad Fishmonger?

Mad Fishmonger???

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[Edvard]

Ok, the first one looked like a bad crop job, with the one razor-sharp line and the others slightly blurred.  The other photo looks a little more mysterious, but the lack of discernable details tells me it's either very far away and quite large, or fairly close and is just a bare piece of triangular material, aka Space junk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMVqVXDUdaU

[paulobrabo]

By the way, the official description is

Piece of thermal insulation tile floats near the Shuttle Columbia

A small piece of thermal insulation tile floats in space near the Shuttle Columbia. The cloudy surface of the earth is used as a background.

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/luceneweb/caption.jsp?searchpage=true&to_day=31&from_year=1981&from_month=8&to_year=1996&datesearch=Go&hitsperpage=100&from_day=1&to_month=12&pageno=21&photoId=STS61C-31-002

But since when NASA can be trusted  

[SeraphimLabs]

I could see it being that.

Thermal tiles are black in color, and one that cracked could produce a triangular piece that in zero-G would simply float away slowly enough to be photographed.

Some theories advanced earlier by a community of spacefans is that it was part of the Hubble telescope that had been discarded, but although there was a STS-61 mission with that task it was not marked as STS-61C.

[crabby3]

I could see it being that.

Thermal tiles are black in color, and one that cracked could produce a triangular piece that in zero-G would simply float away slowly enough to be photographed.

But how could it get cracked in the first place and then manage to hang-on during all the vibration and flexing of blast-off; only to tear away in zero-G? 

[SeraphimLabs]

I could see it being that.

Thermal tiles are black in color, and one that cracked could produce a triangular piece that in zero-G would simply float away slowly enough to be photographed.

But how could it get cracked in the first place and then manage to hang-on during all the vibration and flexing of blast-off; only to tear away in zero-G? 

Micrometeorite impact. All objects in space are exposed to them at someodd long odds that do happen regularly.

[Tinman57]

I could see it being that.

Thermal tiles are black in color, and one that cracked could produce a triangular piece that in zero-G would simply float away slowly enough to be photographed.

Some theories advanced earlier by a community of spacefans is that it was part of the Hubble telescope that had been discarded, but although there was a STS-61 mission with that task it was not marked as STS-61C.

All thermal tiles, AKA "Heat Shields" are white, at least all the ones I've dealt with in "Skunk Works" and the Space Shuttle.  After re-entry they're slightly blackened with soot, but still white in color as seen here.  This piece of tile, among many other parts that landed around my house, came from the Columbia shuttle crash.

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[4wd]

Just in:

[IainB]

Well the See all metadata, images and captions. indicates that it is one of many pieces of space debris that they know of. See also link SPACE DEBRIS.

[crabby3]

Well the See all metadata, images and captions. indicates that it is one of many pieces of space debris that they know of. See also link SPACE DEBRIS.

@ SeraphimLabs,

I guess all of this leftover junk will eventually come back home and burn up?  Even the Hubble?  After the ISS? 

[app103]

The image was obviously Photoshopped, but not to add that single object, but remove all the others.  

It would have looked a lot more like this, if they had not cleaned it up: