Generally, when people hear about how aliens have contacted humanity and that the government is keeping it all a secret, the source of that claim is some anonymous internet troll filling the web with basely conspiracy theories. However, it turns out that a number of officials within the government have corroborated that basic story. In fact, a surprising number of those individuals are NASA astronauts who claim to know without a shadow of a doubt that aliens have contacted humans, and that they have been doing so for quite some time.
No less than four of the most famous astronauts in American history have publicly stated their beliefs in extraterrestrials and their activities on or around Earth. Some have said that they personally have seen UFOs during their missions, and others have simply stated that they learned about the alien contact from military officials who were above the astronauts during their tenure.
The first astronaut to claim that aliens exist is Edgar Mitchell, the sixth person to walk on the surface of the moon. He was a member of the Apollo 14 crew back in 1971, and since that time he has remained completely convinced that aliens are observing mankind and that they have been observing man for most of history. He has claimed that the Vatican has proof of the existence of aliens, and that peaceful aliens once visited Earth specifically to prevent the nuclear self-annihilation of humanity.
Mitchell has also claimed that Cold War weapons silos and the missiles held within were prime targets for the UFOs, and that they have been seeing flying above the bases. He even claimed the UFOs had the ability to remotely disable those missiles indefinitely. Mitchell is a strong believer in the Roswell conspiracy involving a crashed ‘flying saucer’ in 1947, and he claims the government covered up the crash because they didn’t want the Soviets to know they had recovered such technology.
The second astronaut to claim the existence of aliens is Gordon Cooper, who was one of the first Americans in space. He flew with Project Mercury between 1958 and 1963, and as the first manned flight, it was remotely controlled, so the astronaut passengers only needed to observe. Cooper had a history of claiming to believe in aliens that extended before his first flight, and he even testified before the United Nations in 1984 that he believed extraterrestrials and their vehicles were visiting Earth from distant planets.
Deke Slayton is the third astronaut who claims that extraterrestrials exist, and he was one of the Project Mercury astronauts as well. He eventually went on to be the Director of Flight Crew Operations at NASA. However, in 1951, he gave reports that he saw a UFO with a flat saucer shape fly overhead and disappear into the atmosphere after accelerating at great speed.
The fourth NASA astronaut to publicly reveal his belief in aliens is Brian O’Leary, who was on the wait-list for a manned mission in the 1960s but never actually made it to space himself. After his stint at NASA, he had a near-death experience that completely changed the way he viewed reality and life itself. He went on to work at Princeton as a physics professor, and he has publicly said many times that the evidence of alien visitation is too great to ignore. He also claims that advanced alien civilizations have been observing humanity for most of recorded history, and that they don’t have the same sort of physical form or materialistic existence that is the foundation of humanity.
These are just a handful of the NASA officials who have stated their beliefs in aliens, but there are hundreds more spread throughout the varying agencies of the government.