To the ground control commentator on Nasa’s live public feed, they’re merely ‘reflections on the camera lens’ – but the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis don’t sound so convinced.
A spooky YouTube video appears to show three ‘orbs’ moving slowly around the Atlantis, as it floats in orbit during a 2006 mission.
The footage, which is a segment of the feed, begins with one of the astronauts describing to ground control what they’re seeing.
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
The unnamed crew member says: ‘It’s a structure that’s definitely not rigid. Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen on the outside of the Shuttle, that’s for sure.’
He describes how the object ‘quickly moved to the nose of the orbiter, moving away at least 100 feet’.
For a few minutes nothing of note happens, but then at 4.45 the camera looks beyond the shuttle and focusses on three orbs that appear to be hovering in a triangular formation nearby.
The ground control commentator immediately passes them off as ‘reflections in the camera lens’ – but the shuttle crew members seem far less dismissive, with one confirming that they’re seeing ‘three or four objects’ and asking: ‘Can you confirm it’s just the one that’s moving?’
Mystery: Ground control ask the Atlantis crew members what they’re seeing
Send off? The orbs appeared as the crew inspected the Shuttle before making a final descent
End of an era: Atlantis touched down at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just before dawn on July 21, 2011, wrapping up the final mission of the 30-year space shuttle program
However, the footage, despite being mysterious, remains too indistinct for any conclusions to be drawn about whether E.T really was observing the shuttle mission.
Many YouTube users who’ve studied it firmly believe the crew are looking at space junk.
However, could E.T have been zooming around Seoul, recently?
A mysterious round white object was filmed whizzing around a passenger plane above the capital of South Korea on April 7.
The clip, which has also been uploaded to YouTube (see below), begins with the ‘craft’ at the bottom of the screen, keeping pace with the passenger plane.
But then it speeds up and rises in altitude before zipping off out of shot, just as the startled person filming it tries to zoom in for a closer look.
When the UFO accelerates he can be heard making some sort of exclamation, as if trying to draw someone’s attention to it. 
Strange: The round, white UFO can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture
The video was uploaded by YouTube user ‘Crazybreakingnews’, who commented: ‘It looks a little bit strange and not really similar to the other videos. If it’s really real and not a fake, it looks like a kind of military drone.’
Several YouTube users are convinced it’s a UFO of some sort, but others remain sceptical.
Psued0Name said: ‘When stabilised, it is easy to see what is going on with the video.
‘The edges of the UFO are not blurred like all of the other background objects, it seems like a separate effect from the background, and in fact you can see edge noise on the shape of the UFO indicating it’s a fake.
‘It doesn’t even look right if you start to look at it hard, especially slowed down frame by frame.’
User vicariousjojoe agreed, writing: ‘People, you should know by now what is fake and what’s not. You can always tell by the way the camera moves and zooms.’
Possible UFO activity has recently been sighted much closer to home, with a star-gazer filming intriguing footage of a glowing UFO, which he says he spotted hovering over the Thames Estuary in February.
The man, identified only as Space999dude, recorded the phenomenon as he drove past the river at night, he said.
The mysterious, oval aircraft can be seen suspended in the air displaying several amber-gold lights of varying sizes.
