Former NASA astronaut claims he saw an 'alien-like' creature on Space Shuttle Atlantis

A former NASA astronaut made a shocking claim that he saw an ‘alien-like’ creature on Space Shuttle Atlantis.

The astronaut kept his spooky discovery to himself until revealing it all in a series of posts made on X (formerly Twitter) back in 2018.

The astronaut in question is Leland Melvin and he had a pretty surprising answer to a query about whether he had ever seen a UFO during his time in space.

Leland Melvin thought he saw an alien-like creature on a space mission (Robby Klein/Contour by Getty Images)

And since Melvin has logged over 500 hours in orbit, he’s a good man to ask.

Replying to the question, Melvin shared a funny story, detailing how he once "thought [he] saw something organic/alien like floating out of the payload bay".

He described the strange creature he was looking at as appearing to be "translucent, curved, organic looking", which is quite a creepy trio of words, particularly if you're in space.

The astronaut was sufficiently spooked that he "called the ground to ask what it could be".

Thankfully, he was quickly given a very rational answer to dispel his fears which was that "it was ice that had broken off of the Freon hoses".

Now, if you're asking us what Freon hoses are, you're in the wrong place, but the core point is that Melvin was able to rest easy knowing that some bulbous ice was on his spacecraft, rather than a creepy space jellyfish.

Still, it was clearly a bit of a heart-pounding episode for Melvin - he said that he "was about to say Houston we have a problem" but that he held back and kept calm, knowing that "everyone spins-up when those words are uttered from a space vehicle".

The astronaut was so scared that he called ground control (Bob Levey/Getty Images for National Geographic Documentary Films)

After all, accidents and malfunctions in space aren't exactly easy to solve for ground control. Even before you think of the mechanical problems that can crop up, we've all seen too many horror movies set on spaceships to stay totally calm about the idea.

What we are still waiting to find out from Melvin is which mission this happened on, or when it happened and since it was just an idle chat on X, there aren't exactly loads of firm timelines involved in the conversation.

Still, it just goes to show that even someone with acres of experience in dealing with the hard science of space can get freaked out and carried away by extraterrestrial ideas if the light hits some smooth ice just right.