‘UFO’ spotted in 55-year-old space photo

UFO researcher Scott Waring says he has spotted an extra-terrestrial spacecraft in a 55-year-old photo from Nasa's Mercury Project.

Scientists say radical claims such as this are a simple case of pareidolia, which is the psychological response to seeing significant items in random places.

The image was taken by unmanned space probe Mercury-Redstone 1A on December 19, 1960.

'Why wouldn't aliens be interested in watching a historical moment in human history?,' asked Waring in his blog.

'Especially since the capsule was unmanned, there were no worries that they would be seen.'

The image was taken as part of Project Mercury, which was the US' first mission to put humans in space. It started in 1958 and ended in 1963.

The objectives of the program were to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, investigate man's ability to function in space, and to recover both the astronaut and spacecraft safely.

The first United States astronaut was Alan Shepard, whose suborbital flight of the Freedom 7 space capsule on May 5, 1961, was the first success of the Mercury program.

'It's actually the Earth in the background and the UFO is in space observing the Mercury capsule,' Waring said

This isn't the first time UFO hunters have scoured old Nasa images in the hope of finding evidence of alien life.

Earlier this year, Waring claimed to have seen two mysterious glowing objects in a photo from a Gemini mission in 1966.

And a ten-year old image of the Martian yielded what Waring believed to be a rock shaped uncannily like the President Obama's head - and that it could be part of a statue.

(dailymail.co.uk)