Space Bats and Orbital Out of Place Artifacts

The phenomenon of out of place artifacts or “Oopas” as they are often called has been around for centuries, and some of the artifacts themselves indicate they have been around for centuries or even longer.  From the automobile spark plug discovered in million year old coal deposits deep underground to the Baghdad battery and the Antikythera mechanism, we’re all familiar with artifacts that seem to defy all known logic.  But what if we were to discover out of place objects in space?

Since mankind first started exploring the area at the edge of Earth’s stronger gravitational field, a number of junk items were left up with the expectation that it would eventually be pulled down by orbital decay.  Unfortunately, it turns out most estimates that this decay would pull objects back to Earth turned out to be a little off.  In 2005 NASA expected the number of large abandoned objects in space was somewhere at around 13,000.  Today it is estimated the number of objects still in orbit could be as much as twice that amount.  As it happens, orbital reentry does not happen quite as quickly or effectively as we had ever hoped.  And so in the vast swarm of things floating in space around our planet, is it possible there are some objects that, if they were to undergo more extensive scrutiny would be found to be completely unexplained.

Of course all accounts of unexplained or out of place artifacts now have to come through either official channels or be leaked – and therefore risk losing a certain level of credibility even if they come from people who were once entrusted with millions of dollars worth of equipment on space flights.

But with the space program in our age it is understandable that a great deal of the objects could simply be explained by suggesting they were either contraband snuck aboard spacecraft or they were simply objects in space that had been carried along with the craft as it exited orbit.  An example of the latter would be the legendary “space bat.”  Space bat, as it has been affectionately called since the incident on March 15, 2009.  Space bat was a black bat that had attached itself to the insulation around the space shuttle and had refused to leave as the countdown sirens alerted it that its new-found home was about to take off.  Space bat was recorded as the shuttle Discovery where temperatures did not exceed 70 degrees despite the object being hurtled at great speeds out of the Earth’s atmosphere.  Unfortunately for Space Bat, the shuttle eventually launched the creature off of its surface and it died what Gizmodo called “the most glorious death imaginable.”  It’s currently unknown if this was the first such occurrence of a bat hitching an unauthorized ride aboard a space shuttle, but no evidence has been collected suggesting this was the case.

But what about other objects?  What if it was not a bat, but rather a massive stone orb covered in caligraphy?  Such a discovery would not necessarily prove the existence of extraterrestrials, but it would certainly continue the unfolding theme that the universe around us is far more unexplained than we ever thought possible.