Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev and other cosmonauts

In April of 1979, Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev lifted off from Star City to dock with the Soviet Solyut 6 space station. But while en route, something strange happened.

Cosmonaut Afanasyev saw an unidentified object turn toward his craft and begin tailing it through space. "It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineering structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls.

The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away."

Popovich relays a sighting of a UFO next to the airplane he was travelling aboard as he was returning home from Washington D.C. with a delegation of scientists.

Cosmonaut Alexandr Baladin stated that "flying saucers" have come into close proximity to the MIR space station as well as the Baikonur Cosmodrom. He added there is sufficient evidence to warrant a scientific study of the phenomenon, and that it is time that world governments officially acknowledge the UFO phenomenon's existence. "General Vladimir Ivanov, former commander of Russia's Military Space Forces, recalls that three objects flew at a considerable altitude over Baikonur Cosmodrome and were picked up on radar.