What happened
In a Russian TV interview reported in 2013, Kovalyonok described a bright elliptical object below the station, moving parallel to it. He could not judge its size or distance. Before his crewmate could ready a camera, two flashes a few seconds apart lit it gold, and it split into two golden spheres and vanished into a white haze. In another interview he likened it to a pulsing barbell and said he did not think it was artificial. A widely shared version, with a sphere 40 m away, three beings and an exchange of star maps, has no traceable source.