Page, Arizona, 1997
Lying on the warm, red desert sand, gazing up at the stars in the crystal-clear night, I watched satellites in low Earth orbit swiftly transit above me — objects that looked like stars but weren't — following predictable, straight trajectories unlike the flash of meteors and decidedly faster than the ultraslow movement of stars with the Earth's rotation.
Then, my heart skipped a beat as one of the satellites, at least that's what I thought it was, made an abrupt right-angle turn, roughly two degrees of visual angle (the width of my thumb at arm's length), shifting its trajectory and then proceeding straight again towards the far horizon.
My scientist's brain tried to make sense of what I'd just seen, calculating that the G forces of making such a startling change in direction would have torn any man-made satellite to pieces (moving laterally about 7 miles in a small fraction of a second) if, indeed, human technology could devise a propulsion system capable of causing such a move in low Earth orbit in the first place.
Had I just seen a UFO? Was it man-made, some kind of unknown natural phenomena, or... something not of this world?
Was I crazy, or what?
Comment: Post-hearing interview with 8:30 / 10:21 Congressman Tim Burchett,