A former NASA scientist has backed a groundbreaking study investigating mysterious flashes in the skies during the early nuclear age, decades before the first satellites were launched.
Ivo Busko, a retired NASA developer who worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute, published a pre-print paper this week that independently confirmed mysterious transient flashes first identified by astronomer Dr Beatriz Villarroel and her VASCO research team.
Their October 2025 study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.
Villarroel, from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden, identified a possible connection between nuclear tests conducted between 1949 and 1957 and an increase in mysterious bright spots known as ‘transients’ appearing in the sky.
These transients have proven difficult to explain using known natural phenomena, with Villarroel noting that some appeared highly reflective, similar to mirrors, and showed signs consistent with rotating objects.
Busko conducted an independent search of archival sky photographs from the 1950s, using a separate analytical method designed specifically to verify Villarroel’s earlier discoveries.
His investigation uncovered dozens of transient flashes displaying the same unusual signatures reported by the VASCO team, including extremely short-duration bursts of light.
Busko wrote that the findings ‘independently confirm the presence of such transients,’ adding further weight to the unusual flashes first reported by Villarroel’s team.
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