NARRATOR: NASA's mission is to explore the unknown.
Man: There's more that we don't know than we do know.
That's just the nature of the universe.
NARRATOR: In the search for answers,
it launches its scientists into space,
its craft beyond the limits of the solar system.
Williams: Taking risk is part of making discoveries.
Space exploration is like lighting a match,
and we don't know what lurks in the shadows.
There could be anything out there.
NARRATOR: Life on distant planets...
Swain: I cannot understand what's going on.
I don't see what I'm expecting.
What are these things? Where'd they come from?
NARRATOR: Strange phenomena in space...
A dark triangular shape? I mean, that's just strange.
It was a near thing for most of the missions.
NARRATOR: And terrifying near-Earth encounters.
That's a big story that is getting no attention.
NARRATOR: NASA's missions have uncovered disturbing anomalies.
Man: Okay, we're seeing three or four objects.
Man #2: Yeah, there are three objects.
NARRATOR: That continue to perplex
our finest scientific minds.
[ beep ]
These are "NASA's Unexplained Files".
-=[" NASA's Unexplained Files - 1x05 "]=- [" Interstellar Gold Rush "] Sync, corrected for web by : UF Original Air Date on March 18, 2014
A rocket launch that almost ends in disaster...
Orwoll: I can't imagine what it must have been like
inside that command module.
NARRATOR: ...leads to an unexpected encounter in space.
We didn't know what happened. No one knew what happened.
NARRATOR: Which leaves some suspecting intervention
from unknown forces.
NASA is being told "stay away from the moon."
we need a rational explanation for that.
NARRATOR: Moments after Apollo 12 launches
from the Kennedy Space Center in November 1969,
the unthinkable happens.
Orwoll: Within 30 seconds of launch,
the spacecraft is struck by lightning.
NARRATOR: Lunar-module pilot Alan Bean
is unaware of the strike.
Bean: All of a sudden, master alarm comes on.
I look up there at the display
that has all the caution and warning lights on there...
there was more of them on there than I'd ever seen in my life.
NARRATOR: Bean struggles to decipher the instruments.
There was no pattern. I had no idea what to do.
NARRATOR: Then, in a million-to-one shot...
Within 30 seconds, they're struck again.
[ radio chatter ]
NARRATOR: As mission control
frantically attempts to assess the damage,
the Saturn V rocket continues on its trajectory,
sending the three-man crew into the upper atmosphere
at 6,000 miles per hour.
There's 7.5 million pounds of thrust going on down there.
That's the biggest, most powerful engine
ever built on Earth.
Orwoll: You've got to, at that moment, say,
"Okay, I'm on a rocket
"that's filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen
"and I'm on my way to space, and everything's dropped off.
What do I do now?"
NARRATOR: Mission commander Pete Conrad
has just a few minutes to decide if they should abort the launch.
The spacecraft is still flying the way it's supposed to,
so Pete Conrad, cool as a cucumber,
does not engage the abort for the spacecraft.
NARRATOR: The crew keeps calm,
and the system comes back online.
Capcom: Apollo 12, Houston.
The good word is, you're go for TLI.
Conrad: Hoopee-doo. We're ready.
But to some observers, there's something strange
about two lightning strikes happening within 30 seconds.
Apollo 12 defies coincidence.
It's struck by lightning twice.
Lightning doesn't strike twice.
NARRATOR: And despite a successful moon landing,
when command-module pilot Dick Gordon
undocks the lunar module,
audio transmissions suggest
that something is interfering with the mission.
Weird objects appear to fly past the command module.
Dick sees something out the window,
and he doesn't know what it is,
and he's just wondering where it came from.
We're on the far side of the moon, and he doesn't know.
NARRATOR: The objects are brightly colored
and appear to rotate as they fly past.
NASA assumes the objects are debris from the lunar module.
There shouldn't be pieces coming off,
and if insulation comes off, this can be a clue
that maybe some part of the lunar module will overheat,
so any kind of information like that
has to be reported right away.
NARRATOR: But when NASA examines
on-board photos of the undocking procedure,
no insulation is missing.
He wants to make sure it isn't
a part of our spacecraft we need,
but apparently it wasn't.
I don't know.
NARRATOR: The debris explanation doesn't satisfy everyone.
If they were natural objects,
they wouldn't be changing colors.
If they were natural objects,
why would they be moving in such strange ways?
I believe we're being warned off.
"Stay away and don't come back."
NARRATOR: Whatever the astronauts of Apollo 12 saw,
we do know that every one of humanity's voyages
into the cosmos creates debris,
and we may not be the only travelers
to leave evidence of our travels scattered across space.
Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the solar system,
has a mysterious scar.
There's a giant, black triangle
that's embedded in the rocky asteroid itself.
I mean, a dark triangular shape? I mean, that's just strange.
There are no triangles, really, in space.
They're artificial designs.
Could it be that's a crashed UFO on the asteroid Vesta?
NARRATOR: 2011.
In the asteroid belt, the Dawn spacecraft
reaches 4.5-billion-year-old Vesta.
The probe starts mapping the planet
and immediately detects something strange.
One of the images that we get back from Vesta in 2011
was a circular region with a triangle structure,
and there's some speculation
that this could be a crashed craft of some sort.
NARRATOR: The image is eerily reminiscent of black triangles
spotted in the skies and space above Earth.
Garvie: Time and time again, we hear about the stories
of these large, dark triangular objects in the sky.
Birnes: We've seen triangles, captured triangles on film
right here on planet Earth...
in Belgium, when flying triangles outran NATO F-16s,
in Phoenix, when giant triangles flew overhead.
NARRATOR: The Dawn probe's discovery
of precious metals beneath the surface of Vesta
suggests why someone might visit the asteroid.
Vesta contains precious metals
like gold, platinum, and iridium,
at levels that are several orders of magnitude higher
than we see on the surface of the Earth.
NARRATOR: Plundering asteroids for precious metals
might sound crazy,
but mining space rocks could one day be commercially viable.
Some people estimate that a single asteroid
could be worth $96 trillion.
Right? That's the GDP of the entire world.
Just think of what that does to your stock price
if you're a mining company.
It is worth the effort to take that shot to try to get there,
because if you're there, you're there first,
you build the technology to do it repeatedly, you're in charge.
NARRATOR: Internet and Hollywood billionaires
are currently planning to mine close-Earth asteroids.
But excavating enormous rocks floating in space
would push the limits of our technology.
There are many, many challenges.
I mean, firstly, we've got to get there.
You know, it's a long way away.
I mean, we've only gone to the moon with man so far.
But secondly, you know,
a lot of the things that we take for granted...
the way machines work on Earth, with an atmosphere...
would not necessarily work in the same way on an asteroid.
Dust, for instance... it sticks to everything.
NARRATOR: Planetary scientist Richard Binzel
doesn't accept the crash-site theory.
I see a totally natural meteorite impact site.
On an object like Vesta that's been pummeled by impacts,
you get a wide range of bizarre shapes.
It's completely expected.
NARRATOR: Whether or not the marks on Vesta
are evidence of interstellar mining,
the appeal of exploiting planets like Vesta is undeniable.
Why not mine somebody else's solar system?
That's what some intelligent life out th
NARRATOR: An alien world that appears to mirror planet Earth.
That's a big, big surprise. That's the "aha" moment.
NARRATOR: And lost audio recordings from an early NASA mission
reveal evidence of a chilling close encounter.
Collins: Flash, Mark. Young: What the heck are they?
NARRATOR: In the early years of the space race...
Young: This is Gemini 10, Houston.
...a manned orbiter spots something strange.
What the heck are they?
You're in a spacecraft. It's a life-and-death situation.
And then this happens.
NARRATOR: As the space race intensifies,
is someone or something
attempting to sabotage NASA's Gemini 10 mission?
160 miles above the Earth,
an astronaut struggles to lock on to a rotating rocket booster.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You bum.
Collins: 360 and holding. How fast are we closing?
Okay. R-dot is 4 feet per second.
Where is it?
Darn it! I really missed this one.
NARRATOR: This is the Gemini 10 orbiter.
It needs to complete a docking procedure with a booster
in order to blast off into a higher orbit.
No, no! Holy mackerel!
The Gemini program really is that program
that allows us to learn "How do we rendezvous two spacecraft?"
Okay, keep your pants on.
We need to learn all that before we can go to the moon,
'cause you don't go on the long trip without learning to drive first.
Docking conditions.
Extension lights.
Dock!
[ clang ]
NARRATOR: But docking with the rocket booster
is the least of Gemini's problems.
The astronauts have struggled
with new and unreliable technology
from the moment they launched.
What's the matter?
Reading out all kinds of crazy numbers.
Bean: The computer wasn't very good.
The thing I remember mostly, looking back,
is we just didn't know exactly what we were doing.
NARRATOR: Unable to rely on the computer,
astronauts Michael Collins and John Young
use a space sextant to get a fix on their position.
Do you want me to try and use the natural horizon, here?
Whatever you want to. I can't see a darn thing out here.
Without knowing their position, they cannot locate the booster.
Gosh, I'm losing my mind. Yaw right, will you?
Here comes the sun. Watch out!
Confined inside Gemini's tiny command capsule,
the astronauts struggle to see what's outside.
It's a very small window... let's say about like this...
and it's got depth to it
in order to be protected thermally in the light,
so when you look through it,
it's like looking through a little, bitty tunnel.
You've got no peripheral vision,
so if you want to look over there,
whoever's controlling the spacecraft has got to turn,
and then you can look over there.
NARRATOR: Then, as he attempts to get a fix on their position,
Collins spots something weird.
What the heck are they?
Did you see that?
He looks out and sees something he doesn't understand...
Collins spots something and really doesn't know what it is.
...and he wants John to look at it.
Maybe John knows exactly what it is.
NARRATOR: Mysteriously, the NASA archives
misplaced the encounter's audio recording.
But we've secured the transcript
documenting onboard chatter during the mission.
The voices you can hear are actors.
Look at those. They're beautiful.
John, do you see what I see?
Yes. What the heck is that?
Is this tape recorder still running?
Yep. I don't know what those are.
Despite the high strangeness
and the extreme stress that they must have been under,
thrown into this bizarre situation,
they remain calm.
The training kicks in, and they document it thoroughly.
Okay. The time on it is 1:39, and they are directly ahead.
The one on top is slightly to the left
of the one on the bottom.
And about a degree below those two, there is a flashing light.
There. It went flash, Mark, flash, Mark.
Think we ought to report it to the ground?
Pope: This is when things get really strange.
They call mission control at Houston
to try and get a bearing on these objects.
This is Gemini 10, Houston.
We have two bright objects up here in our orbital path.
If you can give us a bearing, maybe we can track them down.
NARRATOR: But then...
They just disappeared.
What were they, what were they doing,
and where did they go?
I guess they were satellites of some kind.
NARRATOR: NASA analyst Jim Oberg
agrees with Collins' explanation for the sighting.
During the Gemini program, crews would often report
seeing other satellites that didn't seem to be identified.
NARRATOR: But not everyone buys the satellite explanation.
A spacecraft from Earth is a pretty noticeable thing.
It's really going to get their attention.
NARRATOR: But Jim Oberg has an alternative explanation
for why the objects were flashing on and off.
One of the possible solutions
were top-secret military satellites, like Corona.
Man: Corona began under utmost secrecy.
NARRATOR: Corona... a top-secret C.I.A. spy program
that began sending reconnaissance satellites
into orbit in the 1960s.
One of the reasons the Corona photographs were so good
was that the film was actually returned to Earth
in recoverable capsules.
They could be dropped off, fire a little rocket,
push them back into the atmosphere.
There. It went flash, Mark, flash, Mark.
NARRATOR: Did Collins and Young witness the rockets
firing these capsules towards Earth?
Or is there a more sinister explanation for what they saw?
To this day, the mystery remains unexplained.
An unlikely series of mishaps on NASA's first space station
leaves scientists struggling for explanations.
[ alarm blares ]
Birnes: Were we being warned?
"You can go this far, but you can't go any further."
NARRATOR: And 60 light-years away,
scientists discover Earth version 2.0.
It's simple, isn't it? It's just life.
NARRATOR: Mystifying readings
from a planet orbiting a distant star
force scientists to face an astonishing possibility...
I cannot understand what's going on.
I don't see what I'm expecting.
NARRATOR: ...that Earth is not the only blue planet in the cosmos
with signs of life.
You realize you know something about the universe
that nobody else has ever known before.
Why does this have to be so complicated?
It's simple, isn't it? It's just life.
NARRATOR: May 2007.
The Hubble telescope picks out a planet
63 light-years from Earth.
At these colossal distances, planetary scientist Mark Swain
struggles to investigate the strange world.
It is 370 trillion miles away,
and it's really close to a bright star.
So it's sort of like staring at a bright headlight
and trying to see the world's tiniest firefly
flitting around right beside it.
NARRATOR: But when colleagues discover
that the distant world has an atmosphere,
the weird planet becomes Swain's number-one priority.
Swain: Now that we've got this puzzle
about what's in the planet's atmosphere,
we're gonna have to make a mathematical model
to try to understand what we're looking at.
NARRATOR: He studies the wavelengths of light
coming from the planet's star in an attempt to discover
the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere.
This is our star, and these bottles of liquid
are gonna represent our planetary atmospheres.
When the planet passes in front of the star,
we can get the spectrum of the starlight,
and in that spectrum
will be hidden the atmosphere of the planet.
NARRATOR: An atmosphere's chemical composition
determines its spectrum.
But what Swain discovers makes no sense.
Swain: There was another part of the spectrum...
a different color of light...
where the patterns weren't at all like what we expected.
The only way we can resolve this puzzle
about what molecules are making this spectrum
is to put in methane.
NARRATOR: The presence of methane
forces scientists to question how it got there.
Methane's a very exciting molecule to find,
because, certainly on Earth, it has a biological connection,
and that's a big, big surprise.
It's the "aha" moment.
Here was a planet around another star,
many light-years from us,
that actually looked very, very similar in composition
to Earth and the planets within our solar system.
Shostak: We've got a lot of methane in the atmosphere here,
and it's mostly due to cows and pigs, right?
So could there be life on this planet going around that star?
NARRATOR: Biological processes produce most of Earth's methane,
but geological activity can also produce the gas.
When further analysis
reveals the color of this apparently Earth-like planet,
it begins to look like the presence of methane
is more than a geological accident.
It has a blue sky, just like our own sky,
due to dust or very high clouds...
like the clouds in our own stratosphere here on Earth.
People got really excited,
and they started asking questions like,
"because it's blue, is it like Earth?"
NARRATOR: However astonishing the similarities may be
between this planet and our own,
there is one massive, critical difference.
It's 30 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun.
Daytime temperatures... 2,000 degrees.
Nighttime temperatures... 2,000 degrees.
One side's always facing the sun.
Look, when it's 2,000 degrees,
you don't get a whole lot of complex chemistry.
NARRATOR: The fearsome temperatures...
14 times hotter than Earth's hottest places...
may rule out the existence of life as we know it.
But unknown life-forms could potentially withstand the heat.
One of the things to distinguish here is this...
when we talk about a planet where there's life,
we know what we look like, we know what we need,
so we're looking for planets like us.
We don't know about life as we don't know it.
Some people say,
"Oh, but life can only be carbon-based life like us."
well, who says?
I would not be at all surprised
if the first life-forms that we find
are completely different from anything
that we've anticipated and predicted beforehand.
NARRATOR: Confirmed life-forms in distant solar systems
remain elusive.
But even though we haven't found them,
what if they've already found us?
A series of dangerous failures on NASA's first space station
leaves scientists struggling for an explanation.
Skylab was one of the unluckiest missions.
So many things went wrong. So many equipment failures.
It was a near thing for most of the mission.
Birnes: Were we being warned?
"You can go this far, but you can't go any further."
NARRATOR: May 1973,
and Skylab, NASA's first space station,
is in serious trouble.
Friedman: Something went wrong.
Skylab ran into accident after accident.
NARRATOR: During launch, one of Skylab's heat shields rips off,
quickly followed by one of its solar panels.
It didn't have the electrical power it was supposed to have,
and it was getting hot.
NARRATOR: When another power panel fails to engage...
[ alarm blaring ]
...the space station is crippled.
The mission is turning into one of NASA's biggest failures.
It was in danger of being useless.
NARRATOR: In just 10 days,
NASA designs and builds
an umbrella-like replacement heat shield.
Man: At stake was the future of the entire Skylab program.
Man: Tallyho to Skylab!
Conrad: Okay, we're docked.
NARRATOR: The shield works,
and mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad
turns his attention to the broken solar panel.
Conrad: The solar wing is gone, completely off the bird.
Solar wing one is in fact partially deployed.
It looks like the meteorite shield has wrapped around it.
The repair demands a dangerous three-hour spacewalk.
Man: It's up to you guys. Just take your time.
Okay, Houston, we're out there.
Bean: They're on the outside of this big cylinder
that we've never planned to walk on it at all.
So, they pull on it, and it didn't work,
and so Pete said,
"Let me go out here, put more force on it."
and finally, all of a sudden, it comes up.
NARRATOR: The spacewalk is a success.
Within hours, Skylab has power
and is cool enough to start its mission.
[ man breathing heavily ]
The crew's job is to test human responses
to prolonged stays in space.
They will also survey the Earth.
Oberg: Skylab had a Earth-specific, high-resolution imaging system.
pointed down toward the surface of the Earth almost constantly.
NARRATOR: Back on Earth, scientists struggled to explain
the incredible series of mishaps that hit Skylab...
Until a photograph from its survey mission
seems to offer a clue.
There is something that looks like a long cylinder
with two solar panels at each end.
For all intents and purposes, it looks like a satellite.
NARRATOR: On a mission plagued by unforeseen problems,
the presence of this mysterious object arouses suspicion.
It wasn't just an object that was there and gone
so you could call it some kind of illusion.
It was there, it was gone, and it came back.
That coming back bespeaks something intelligent
about the guidance of that object.
NARRATOR: Some begin to wonder
if the Soviets could be responsible.
It's an era of change between U.S. and Soviet relations,
'cause the U.S. won the moon race.
Skylab is another part of this U.S. triumph
over the formerly invincible Soviet program.
NARRATOR: NASA analysis concludes
the object is not a soviet spy satellite.
It's a Brazilian jungle airstrip.
I have a great deal of trouble with the airstrip explanation.
It just doesn't seem to compute,
especially in the Brazilian jungle.
I mean, that's handy.
You can't go there real quick to check it out.
As always, we have this question about,
"How valid is the explanation?"
NARRATOR: Airstrip, satellite, or something else,
it's difficult to totally rule out
the anomaly being in some way connected to Skylab's problems.
Friedman: NASA cannot confront anything
that indicates visitation.
It's simply unwilling to.
Now, I don't know who makes the rules, obviously.
Nobody's published a list of no-nos for NASA to talk about.
Certainly this has been one.
NARRATOR: Coming up, evidence of violence on the Martian surface.
Brin: Obviously something powerful had happened
that blew pits of the Martian crust off.
NARRATOR: And when humanity starts looking into deep space,
who or what is watching the watchers?
Birnes: If you were an extra-terrestrial civilization,
wouldn't you want to know more
about what that object could see?
NARRATOR: A NASA probe lands in a Martian crater
filled with weird spheres of strangely colored rock.
What are these things? Where'd they come from?
Treiman: What are they doing there?
How do you get little balls in this rock?
Are these traces of life that once existed on Mars?
NARRATOR: January 2004.
NASA's mission to Mars is on the line.
Spacecraft is ready for EDL.
The entire $800-million operation
depends on the Opportunity rover probe's high-risk landing
inside Eagle crater.
Current speed is fast enough
to traverse the United States in less than 12 minutes.
3, 2, 1.
Parachute deployed.
[ cheers ]
We're on Mars, everybody.
When Opportunity starts transmitting,
mission control's elation soon turns to shock.
Bell: We're looking around, we're taking pictures,
and we see the ground covered literally covered...
with these little spherical grains,
and this is really bizarre.
NARRATOR: The Martian surface is covered
in small spherical rocks.
What are these things? Where'd they come from?
Treiman: What are they doing there?
How do you get little balls in this rock?
NARRATOR: Scientists give the puzzling round rocks
an equally puzzling name...
Mars blueberries.
Mars is the red planet, right? Everything's red.
And these are less red,
so to an astronomer, "less red" means blue.
Blueberry. It's cute, you know. It's fun.
We get rid of mysteries
by naming them something that we can understand.
I think they're too quick to do that.
NARRATOR: The presence of spherical rocks
a totally different color from the surrounding terrain
raises the question of how they got there.
Could this have an artificial source?
Obviously something powerful had happened
that blew pits of the Martian crust off.
Something's funny going on there.
NARRATOR: What an artificial source could be
remains pure speculation..
Until the results of an experiment
to test the effects of meteorite impacts
provides an exciting possibility.
When scientists fire high-voltage plasma charges
at Martian dust,
the energy beams transform the fragments into perfect spheres.
[ zapping ]
Bell: I suppose it's possible
that plasma weaponry fired into the ground on Mars
could cause features like this.
One would have to imagine this massive plasma war
among Martian civilizations.
NARRATOR: Another theory for the blueberries' origin
discounts plasma weaponry
but supports the idea of life on the red planet.
Mars "blueberries" might seem a little strange.
We also have them here on Earth,
created in the presence of water.
Treiman: Those little shapes,
they're called concretions to the geologist,
and those form in rock as water circulates through it.
Water on Mars is very exciting,
because it means that at one point,
Mars was probably habitable.
Treiman: We've got active groundwater.
That's what you need on Earth for life.
Perhaps this was an environment where life could have thrived.
NARRATOR: If the Martian blueberries indicate the presence of water
the implications are astonishing.
These tiny spheres could provide the best evidence yet
that Mars was the perfect breeding ground for alien life.
NARRATOR: Coming up, astronaut Story Musgrave
steps into space to repair the Hubble telescope,
but something is out there with him.
All of a sudden... boom!
There's an object that came from nowhere.
NARRATOR: 370 miles above Earth,
astronaut Story Musgrave tries to avert a major catastrophe.
The Hubble telescope...
one of the most adventurous, high-stakes missions possible.
NARRATOR: But while a nation holds its breath...
Friedman: If the mission had failed,
the astronomical community would be out.
NARRATOR: A close encounter leaves Musgrave reeling.
All of a sudden... boom!
There's an object that came from nowhere.
That's a very, very big story that is getting no attention.
NARRATOR: 1993.
NASA's multi-billion-dollar space telescope, Hubble,
is malfunctioning.
What had happened was that the mirror
was ever so slightly out
from what it had been designed for,
and this was just enough to make these images almost useless.
NARRATOR: Hubble is the laughingstock of the scientific world.
You can imagine the disappointment
when the very first images that came back
from this billion-dollar mission were so fuzzy.
So, with this fantastically expensive telescope in jeopardy,
NASA felt that it had to mount an urgent mission
to try and fix the telescope, actually in orbit.
NARRATOR: Astronaut Story Musgrave
is part of the crew tasked with the audacious repair mission.
I view it as a public machine.
I'm taking care of the public's machine,
and the expectations are high.
NARRATOR: The mission to repair
Hubble's faulty optics and damaged solar arrays
will take 11 days
and require five separate, highly dangerous spacewalks.
It's a vacuum, it's temperature, it's radiation,
and it's hypervelocity debris.
That's a disaster very, very fast.
It was a very high-stakes mission,
but for NASA, it was a crisis.
NARRATOR: The crowning glory
of NASA's space-observatory program, Hubble,
is floating uselessly in orbit.
Musgrave and the crew need to salvage not just the telescope,
but NASA's reputation in the eyes of the world.
My job was to identify
every possible failure it could get into
and come up with tools and the procedures to get that job done.
NARRATOR: But no amount of planning
can prepare Musgrave for what happens
during a 6-1/2-hour spacewalk on day 5 of the mission.
All of a sudden... boom!
There's an object that came from nowhere.
NARRATOR: The object appears to fly by the telescope at high speed.
Seconds later, another, on a different trajectory...
again, close to the telescope and shuttle crew.
Well, it just moved from behind the shadow,
and it moved into the sunlight, and there it is.
NARRATOR: No one comments on the objects.
The crew completes their repairs,
and Hubble exceeds all expectations.
Friedman: We wanted to know what's going on out there.
Here we finally had the opportunity.
We've got this magnificent telescope in orbit.
Reid: I'm still astounded by what Hubble can do.
Even when you think you know a galaxy,
when you know a star cluster, Hubble takes a picture of it,
and suddenly there are things there
that you just didn't expect to see.
NARRATOR: But analysis of mission footage
leads some to wonder whether this astronomical breakthrough
had unforeseen consequences.
Consider, how much was Hubble a game changer?
We were suddenly able to see parts of the universe
that were actually invisible to us.
If you were an extra-terrestrial civilization,
wouldn't you want to know more
about what that object could see?
NARRATOR: NASA's Jim Oberg believes
the anomaly's origin can be traced back to Hubble itself.
Oberg: You watch the two objects.
If you trace them back, they will converge at a point
which happens to be right behind the base of the new solar array.
Any piece of insulation, any piece of packing material
that's shaking loose from the base
is gonna move away on the paths
that are exactly like the ones of these two objects.
I will leave room for what they saw being debris.
That doesn't mean
there isn't room for another explanation.
NARRATOR: Without conclusive evidence,
the origin of these strange objects remains unexplained,
but Musgrave believes one day
we'll discover other life somewhere in the cosmos.
Musgrave: Life is powerful. It arises and it happens.
And there's trillions of planets out there conducive to life.
So what do you need?
The probability? It's a certainty.
NARRATOR: Coming up, a shocking discovery
forces us to re-examine
everything we think we know about the moon.
This was like heresy.
You can't think about the moon being alive.
NARRATOR: A mysterious glow on the lunar surface...
I think everyone believes that Cernan saw something,
but we're trying to figure out what it is.
NARRATOR: ...contradicts everything we think we know about the moon.
This was like heresy.
You can't think about the moon being alive.
There's a light, it's overhead, it shouldn't be there,
and that's all there is to it.
NARRATOR: 18 months before the historic launch of Apollo 11,
unmanned lander Surveyor 7 touches down on the moon.
The pictures it sends back baffle scientists.
Birnes: The moon is supposed to be dead. At least that's what we're told.
There's not tectonic activity. There's no seismic activity.
And yet there's an unexplained light
over the surface of the moon.
When scientists saw
this bright outline of landscape on the moon,
they were just dumbfounded.
Delory: There's all kinds of lines of evidence
that there's something going on.
The question is, what?
NARRATOR: Everything we know about this dead rock
tells us it shouldn't be capable of producing light.
But when people start asking questions,
the scientific establishment closes ranks.
They couldn't believe it, therefore they didn't study it.
And, in fact, people were fired. There were losses of jobs.
NARRATOR: Undeterred, rookie planetary scientiest Dr. Peter Schultz
begins his own research.
Schultz: I saw something and realized
if tried to publish that, I would be dead.
It was very dangerous to publish anything about this.
It was terribly controversial, could ruin a career.
I couldn't talk about it. I kept it secret.
NARRATOR: For years, the mystery remains unsolved.
But when Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan
reports similar phenomena,
the scientific community takes notice.
He was in the Apollo 17 command module.
He was in darkness, and he was looking out at the horizon,
and before sunlight hit the spacecraft,
they could see a glow on the horizon
and then these much more bright streamers.
NARRATOR: Cernan and the other Apollo astronauts
witnessed these streamers of light
shooting past the Apollo module,
more than 60 miles above the lunar surface.
Schultz: One thing you have to ask yourself is,
"Was this purely imagination?"
but they drew pictures.
They drew very detailed images of what they saw,
and some of them actually kind of looked like
what Surveyor saw.
I think it was very compelling, very convincing,
but it still is strange, just mysterious.
NARRATOR: In the face of such compelling testimony,
NASA attempts to explain
what could be causing these incredible lights.
The Apollo 17 testimony
was that they saw almost like sunbeams
coming off the horizon before the sun rose.
That makes no sense.
NARRATOR: On Earth, atmospheric refractions
allow us to see light before sunrise.
On the moon, with almost no atmosphere,
there is nothing to refract the light.
It must be caused by something
scattering the light that the observer is seeing.
NARRATOR: NASA speculates that the glow could be sunlight,
scattered by dust particles
that have somehow risen off the lunar surface.
People came around to the idea that it should be dust
pretty quickly,
and so the question became,
"Well, what's causing the dust to move?"
and that's where the intrigue is.
NARRATOR: On a seemingly inert rock with almost no atmosphere,
dust should remain firmly on the lunar surface.
So what is violently propelling the dust up into the lunar sky?
Somehow, you have to get the dust up to some altitude
for it to scatter light,
and so we're looking at processes that kick up dust,
and that includes impacts from meteorites.
It also could arise from electrical effects.
Schultz: The moon is covered with dust. These tiny little particles.
and when the sun hits it,
it kicks off electrons, and that makes the dust positive-charged.
And so the dust on the moon
begins to behave like jumping beans,
and they just simply jump around,
and that's what scatters the light.
NARRATOR: If plumes of dust
are being propelled away from the lunar surface,
it could have serious ramifications
for future moon missions.
Schultz: The moon dust is extremely fine,
and if it's bouncing around
and you have a spacecraft that's going around the moon
for a very long time, it's like a bullet.
It could slam into a window, slam into a fuel tank.
There are some dangers.
NARRATOR: LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer,
already in orbit around the moon,
could provide answers.
I think we will get to the bottom. I think we will solve it.
But with every NASA mission, with every space mission,
they create more questions.
Young: What the heck are they?
NARRATOR: As each NASA mission reveals more about the cosmos,
each new discovery also demonstrates
how little we know...
unfamiliar worlds...
unknown objects...
unexplained encounters...
And still too many questions left unanswered.
NASAs.Unexplained.Files.S01E05.Interstellar.Gold.Rush.1080p.WEB.x264-CRiMSON English HI/SDH CC Converted SRT Subtitles - UF (v1.05)