NASA-UAP-D007, Skylab Technical Crew Debriefing 1973
Launched on May 14, 1973, Skylab was the United States’ first laboratory in space. From 1973 to 1974, the station was visited by three crews. This document contains excerpts from all three crews to visit the station. In the first excerpt taken from Skylab 1/2 [first crew] Technical Debriefing from June 30, 1973, highlights crew observations of light flashes. The second excerpt taken from Skylab 1/3 Technical Crew Debriefing from October 4, 1973, highlights two observations—a satellite in similar orbit and another object with a “reddish hue to it.” The final excerpt taken from the Skylab 1/4 Technical Crew Debriefing from February 22, 1974, highlights an observation of flashing lights outside Skylab. • Skylab 2 crew observation: o Page 23-20. [Science Pilot for Skylab 2, Joesph Kerwin] “We saw light flashes. I think all of us saw them. I saw them most often when I was in the sack at night with my eyes closed but awake naturally. They tended to wax and wane in frequency.” • Skylab 3 crew observations: o Page 7-4. [Science Pilot for Skylab 3, Owen Garriott] “We saw that satellite about a week before splashdown. That was one of the most unusual things that we saw and I guess Jack [Lousma] noticed it looking out the window. This bright reddish object was out there and we tracked it for about 5 or 10 minutes. It was obviously a satellite in a very similar orbit to our own.” o Page 20-1. [Science Pilot for Skylab 3, Owen Garriott] “Jack [Lousma] first noticed this rather large red star out the wardroom window. Upon close examination, it was much brighter than Jupiter or any of the other planets. It had a reddish hue to it, even though it was well above the horizon.” • Skylab 4 crew observation o Page 7-8. [Commander for Skylab 4, Gerald P. Carr] “One other area of unusual events that we reported on the dump tapes was that on occasion we saw some lights flashing outside with very a definite motion relative to ours. We presumed that they were other pieces of Skylab, or possibly other satellites.”
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of NASA's 33 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the NASA agency block it ranks #17 of 33 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 294-file archive it ranks #120 of 294.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (120 of 294 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 59/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
Reported by a witness with no instrumented record. The lowest tier in the rubric's sensor axis. Eyewitness perception in field conditions, even when the witness is highly credentialed, scores below capture by any instrumented modality.
Astronaut witness on the official federal record. The highest tier in the rubric and essentially unique in the PURSUE archive - only the Borman/Lovell Gemini 7 file fits this tier, which is the structural reason it is the sole 72 in the archive.
Single-witness or single-instrument capture. Every file in the PURSUE archive scores at this corroboration tier on the released metadata - the rubric records the honest limit of the underlying record rather than inferring multi-witness corroboration that the released summaries do not establish.
No kinematic measurements - speed, acceleration, vector - are published in the released file with sufficient precision to score on the kinematic axis. The rubric does not infer kinematic anomaly from narrative observer estimates. Every file in the archive carries this value, which is itself an observation about the disclosure: kinematic-grade telemetry was not part of what was released.
A conventional candidate explanation has been considered but is not dispositive. Every file in the archive scores this way - reflecting that the underlying release metadata systematically caveats strong determinations in either direction. The released summaries warn against reading them as conclusive analytical judgments, and the rubric respects that.
Released as open after formal review by the originating agency. The file passed through a review process and was published in that posture - a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved with no review,' because review has occurred and the open status is the agency's published conclusion.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 59/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in NASA
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
NASA-UAP-D003A, Gemini 7 Audio Excerpt, 1965
NASA-UAP-D023, Interview Excerpt with Astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1962
NASA-UAP-D003, Gemini 7 Transcript, 1965
NASA-UAP-D010, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
NASA-UAP-D011, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
NASA-UAP-D012, Mercury Atlas 8 Audio Excerpt, October 3, 1962
Verification
SHA-256:
This hash is the SHA-256 of the file body war.gov served on the verification date above. War.gov has re-processed some file bodies since first release (re-compression + OCR, no content removed - see /changes); we re-verify and record the change rather than silently serve a stale hash. How to check this yourself →
Source: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/nasa-uap-d7-skylab-technical-crew-debriefing-1973.pdf