Whispers in the Vacuum: The Impossible Things Astronauts Have Witnessed in Space

Daniel Wood
2026-01-19T12:44:19-05:00

From "Space Snakes" to a terrifying knocking sound on the hull of a Chinese capsule, astronauts have seen things that physics can't explain. We explore the top impossible sightings in space.

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Opinion | Space Exploration & High Strangeness

Overview

Astronauts are the most highly trained observers in human history. They are pilots, scientists, and engineers not prone to flights of fancy. Yet, for decades, men and women returning from orbit have whispered about things that shouldn't be there. From the "Space Eels" seen by Story Musgrave to the terrifying "knocking" heard on the hull of the Shenzhou 5, we explore the impossible anomalies witnessed in the vacuum of space.

Table of Contents

Story Musgrave and the Space Eel

The Knocking on the Hull

The STS-75 Tether Swarm

The Music on the Dark Side of the Moon

What Then? The Void Stares Back

In space, no one can hear you scream. But apparently, you can hear music, see giant biological entities, and watch fleets of UFOs swarm broken satellites. We are told these are ice crystals, swamp gas, or hallucinations. But when the witnesses are American heroes and Chinese pioneers, maybe it's time to listen.

Story Musgrave and the Space Eel

Story Musgrave is a legend. A 6-time Shuttle astronaut, a surgeon, and a mathematician. He is not a man who makes things up. Yet, in interviews following his career, Musgrave described seeing something biological in the void.

During a shuttle mission, Musgrave claimed he saw a "snake" or eel-like creature, approximately 6 to 8 feet long, swimming through space. He was specific about the movement: it wasn't tumbling like debris; it was undulating, as if it had its own propulsion.

"It was rubbery. It had internal motion. It was not a piece of wire."

NASA dismissed it as a detached rubber seal from the cargo bay drifting in the cold. But Musgrave, who had examined every inch of that shuttle, remained unconvinced. He saw what he saw: life in the vacuum.

The Knocking on the Hull

In 2003, Yang Liwei became China's first man in space aboard the Shenzhou 5. It was a moment of national pride, but it came with a moment of pure horror.

While orbiting the Earth alone, Yang heard a sound. He described it not as a mechanical beep or a radio pop, but as "someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer."

He looked out the porthole. He saw nothing. He checked the instruments. Normal. The sound occurred multiple times, coming from outside the craft. In a vacuum, sound cannot travel. So what was hitting the hull? Later theories suggested thermal expansion of the capsule caused the metal to groan, but Yang's visceral description of an intelligent "knock" remains one of space travel's creepiest mysteries.

The STS-75 Tether Swarm

The "Tether Incident" is perhaps the most famous UFO footage in NASA history. In 1996, the Space Shuttle Columbia deployed a satellite on a 12-mile-long tether. The line snapped, and the satellite drifted away.

As the astronauts filmed the lost experiment, the screen filled with hundreds of pulsating, disc-shaped objects swarming around the tether. Some appeared to be miles wide, passing behind the tether (indicating immense size). NASA claims they were out-of-focus ice particles and debris. However, the way the objects seemed to "inspect" the broken line has fueled decades of conspiracy theories that we are under constant surveillance.

The Music on the Dark Side of the Moon

During the Apollo 10 mission in 1969—the dress rehearsal for the moon landing—astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan were on the far side of the Moon. They were cut off from Earth radio contact.

Yet, they weren't in silence. The mission transcripts record them asking each other:

"You hear that? That whistling sound?"

"It sounds like, you know, outer space-type music."

"Boy, that sure is weird music."

The sound lasted for nearly an hour. NASA engineers later explained it as radio interference between the Lunar Module and the Command Module. But the astronauts' hesitation to report it—fearing they would be deemed mentally unfit—speaks volumes. They heard a song where there should have been only static.

What Then? The Void Stares Back

At What Then Studio, we respect science. We know that the human brain seeks patterns in chaos—ice becomes UFOs, thermal creaks become knocking.

But there is a threshold where coincidence becomes correlation. When the bravest, most rational people our species produces tell us that they saw things "swimming" in the dark, or heard knocking on the door of their spaceship, we should stop trying to debunk them and start asking: Who is knocking?