Damn, check this video out.
http://www.qtm.net/~geibdan/videoclips/sts48.qt
The Space Shuttle
The Shuttle has been the centre of UFO folklore since its first ventures into the atmosphere.
There is well documented footage of a dancing ball of light shooting over the shuttle's launch area just before the disastrous 1986 Challenger explosion and there are two pieces of video available on the net which show many disks maneuvering in the vicinity of the shuttle before they shoot off. The craft seem to be responding to what appears to be missile fire coming from Earth.
Sept 15, 1991: A camera on Space shuttle 'Discovery' was filming the curvature of the Earth during mission STS-48 and transmitting images to a NASA select cable network.
Donald Ratsch, a Maryland space researcher, managed to tape the NASA feed and was astounded to discover what appeared moving objects maneuvering some miles from the space shuttle.
Footage shows many objects cruising through space to the right of the shuttle. One object appears to exit the earth's atmosphere, then proceeded to fly parallel with the planet's curvature until a bright flash was recorded by the shuttle camera. At that moment, the object abruptly changed course by almost 120 degrees and accelerated into space. A second object that appeared stationary before the flash also accelerated in the same direction as the first one. What appears to be a surface-to-air missile is then seen rocketing toward the original position of the very lucky first object. Other objects can be seen moving in a variety of directions.
The shuttle at the time of filming was in the airspace of Australia's Pine Gap joint US tracking and intelligence installation.
Ratsches find soon made the rounds of the UFO community and soon a quality tape was obtained by NASA and analyzed. NASA claimed that the objects were ice particles reflecting sunlight. This came into serious question when Nebraska Physicist, Dr Jack Kasher, attempted to prove NASA's explanation to be correct. His extensive studies revealed that it would have been in fact impossible for the shuttle's camera's to record such particles. Kasher concluded that the objects were some sort of space craft.
Despite Kasher's finding's, NASA have stuck to the ice particle story.
Another explanation for the footage which has been thrown up is that the flash which is seen to the bottom right is actually the shuttles thrusters coming into operation. That's fine but why do the thrusters influence the objects and not the trajectory of the shuttle itself?. The curvature of the horizon does not change one iota.
Judge for yourself if you have seen the video or scroll down to download the footage.
The fact that the film was taken from a NASA craft means its credibility can't be questioned.
After the footage was aired all transmissions from Discovery were stopped.