What happened
From the wardroom window the crew saw a bright red "satellite" pulsing from brightest to dimmest about every ten seconds. They tracked it for about ten minutes and photographed it. In the debriefing of October 4, 1973, Lousma said it never took the shape of an object but was always brighter than any star. One frame shows a squiggly line that UFO writers have featured. Oberg, who later discussed it with Garriott and Lousma, argues it was debris shed by Skylab itself, and calls the squiggle a likely camera fault.