Being home alone may not be scary until you hear something screeching in the middle of the night. When you are up in the space, you are practically in the middle of nowhere, and you are bound to get scared. There may not be any ghosts around the international space station, but that does not mean nothing creepy happens.
In the October of 2013, the ISS crew saw a strange “jellyfish.” cloud hovering above the Earth. Knowing that nothing was scheduled to be launched from the US that day, the astronauts were rather surprised to witness it. The Russian military issued a report claiming that it was due to a Russian rocket test being conducted in Kazakhstan. On several other occasions, astronauts have seen bolts of lightning above the Earth’s clouds, which should be okay but these forks appeared to shoot upwards. It is still not known whether or not they are related to the traditional lightning we see from Earth, or it is some unique reaction of its own. Scientists have been studying the phenomena since, and we are not sure as to why this happens yet.
In the August of 2014, Russian astronauts were out on a spacewalk to collect samples outside the ISS when they claimed they discovered living organisms clinging to the outsides of the space station. These, according to the astronauts, were planktons that originated from Earth. They were unable to explain how the planktons could have gotten to space and how they could have survived there.
Scientists say that the species found on the craft were not found anywhere near the launch location, so it is not possible that they got there atop a spacecraft. One possible explanation is that the planktons got there due to atmospheric currents. If this theory is correct, it would mean that these currents travel much farther than we imagined.
The ISS orbits the earth between 322 kilometers (200 miles) above the surface, and living organisms have been commonly found at 16-32 kilometers (10-20 miles). The presence of organisms in the earth’s orbit means that lifeforms can survive even in the complete vacuum.
In July 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted an ordinary photo from the ISS, but UFO enthusiasts discovered something that even Kelly himself had not noticed. A short YouTube video appeared featuring the photo, pointing out the obvious tube-like object. It looked like some object orbiting Earth, but when the contrast of the picture was improved, it showed that it was just the antenna of the ISS. Well, whatever makes for a good controversy. It was fun while it lasted.
