STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 1, 1996

This photograph opens a three-frame sequence taken by astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-80, a mission that ran from November 19 to December 7, 1996. The release presents the set as pictures of an object it lists as unidentified, photographed in low-Earth orbit, and it offers no identification.

What this frame shows

Here the object sits close to the middle of the frame, just to the right of the Earth’s limb — the curved edge of the planet where it meets the blackness of space.

The later frames matter for reading this one. In the second image, NASA says the object appears to have turned or tumbled about its long axis, which it calls consistent with a free-floating object. In the third, it is seen against the Earth itself, apparently having passed between the shuttle and the planet. The descriptions treat all three frames as showing the same object, not three separate sightings.

What one still cannot tell you

No times, distances or camera details accompany the photos, so the size and range of the object cannot be worked out from this frame alone. NASA’s text names no candidate, and its only interpretive remark is the free-floating comment attached to the second picture. The release includes no crew account of the sighting.