How to crack weird space cases

When a space station astronaut made an offhand remark about an unusual formation of lights he saw passing in front of him during a spacewalk, the report had all the earmarks of an unsolvable space mystery.But it didn't take long to crack the case, thanks to the power of the Internet and one amateur space sleuth’s passion to find out.It turned out that the case of the formation-flying lights was only the latest in a string of spooky space effects with perfectly natural explanations. The investigation began when NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao told Aviation Week & Space Technology about"something interesting" he saw during a March 28 spacewalk with Russian crewmate Salizhan Sharipov.“As the sun started rising after the first dark period, I looked out in the opposite direction of the sun and saw a line of five lights,” Chiao said.

The lights seemed to be flying past fairly quickly "in an echelon formation, except that 'No. 2' was offset," he said.Chiao admitted that he didn't know what the lights were, but he speculated that they might have been a constellation of satellites catching the sun's glint. Or perhaps they were "bright lights from oil platforms actually down on the Earth" that seemed to move due to the space station's own orbital speed.Whatever they were, Chiao was delighted to have seen them. "It just shows you that after spending a lot oftime in space and out on EVAs, there are still things that you can see that still surprise you," he mused.Enter the investigatorOne person who read the story was not surprised, since he had long been fascinated with unusual visual phenomena associated with space missions. James C. Smith, an aerospace engineer in Fairfax, Va., doesn't believe such phenomena are signs of alien visits. What he does believe — and what makes his work on this and other cases so impressive — is that such mysteries can often be solved, using resources available over the Internet. You just have to know where to look and what to do.Based on Chiao's descriptions, Smith figured out the time and the station's location over Earth when the lights were sighted — and deduced that Chiao must have been looking toward the coast ofSouth A......