Are these space vehicles or just space junk?

The broken tether appears as a pencil shaped object surrounded by a swarm of white blobs. Are these "space debris" or possibly some form of life?

This is an old bit of information this. But often the classics prove to be the best. The video of this is somewhere on the blog -- in the video library -- relating the tale of the Canadian communications Bod who was recording all the NASA transmissions over the last three or so years. This forms part of that video.

The narration is this:

The Tether Incident -- Alien Encounter?
I can remember when I first saw them, pulsating and drifting through space. They made my hair stand on its end. I watched as dozens of them swarmed in the television pictures coming from NASA's STS75 mission in December of 1996.

The target of NASA's untraviolet cameras was supposed to be a 12 mile long tether used to tow a 100 million dollar satellite [Right] in an experiment that went wrong. The cable, made from copper, teflon and carbon fibers had snapped and separated from the space vehicle and was slowly drifting away. Examination of the cable shows that it actually melted from over 35,000 watts of electrical energy that was generated by its travel through the Earth's magnetosphere. The experiment was to determine if tethers could be a reliable source of electrical energy, instead of batteries or generators, for the space station, satellites and other orbital missions. The results appear to show that more energy than anticipated was generated. NASA is now seeking a stronger material to carry this higher electrical load.

But it was what happened after the accident that was significant. As the tether separated and drifted behind the shuttle craft, it elongated. Mission control instructed astronaut Franklin to take a picture of it with the onboard infrared camera. As he focused and zoomed in on the broken tether the image was projected on huge screens in Houston. Engineers couldn't believe what they were seeing.

What are we looking at?" the anxious voice of Houston Control inquires of astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz. On the television screen there was a white line, the extended tether, surrounded by an ever increasing number of fuzzy, circular shapes. Some were small but others were huge. The large ones afforded a better assessment of the shape and revealed a hole in the center and a "notch," sometimes two, on the peripheral egde. This notch seems to appear in different locations on different shapes, eliminating the possibility of a video lens or camera iris artifact.

All the time, white blobs, resembling swimming sperm, surround the tether. They seem to come from all directions, speed up and then slow down. Occasionally some large shapes slowly drift in to the frame and are eclipsed by the tether. This indicates to many observers that they are behind the tether, meaning that they must have been huge. The tether, at this point is almost 80 miles away but, knowing its size and width, the approximate size of the largest floating shapes could be measures in miles, not feet.

The shapes seem to pulsate as they move. Some have described the movement as a contraction or winding motion which alternatively unwinds and releases. The hole in the center often can be seen expanding and contracting slightly. In short, these do not seem to be vehicles or artifacts, but rather living things!

Critics of the "alien" assessment point out that all of the objects seem to be positioned too perfectly for the camera. If the hole suggests that the objects are flat or plate-like, why do we never see them edge on? They claim that this must prove that the shapes are, in fact, ice crystals or some other minute debris that is closer to the camera and so out of focus. Certainly this phenomenon is well known and has happened to almost everyone at some time when taking pictures, especially in the snow or in a dusty room.

But the video clearly shows these objects moving at variable speeds, sometimes stopping and changing direction. Critics have yet to explain how space debris could do this.