SIGHTING: SEWARD, NEBRASKA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"We were lying on blankets waiting for 4th of july fireworks display to start at 10 pm in seward, nebraska. at 9:51 an object flew over that in my opinion has no simple conventional explanation. it appeared very similar to the international space station, in that it was a constant white star-like object with no change in direction or angular velocity. it appeared to be very high in the clear night sky, perhaps at the edge of or above the atmosphere. my perception was that it was at least as high as any commercial airliner. the important detail is that the object traversed from near our zenith to the distant east to southeast horizon in just a few seconds, many times faster than any orbital object, and much faster than any normal aircraft at those altitudes. i watched a disintegrating russian satellite a few years ago, and that object took about a full minute to traverse from near one horizon to the other, which makes sense at 7 miles per second and roughly 100 miles altitude. this object, if at the upper edge of the atmosphere, had an angular velocity much too fast for orbital speed. my wife thought the object was in sight for 3 seconds, i thought it was closer to 10 seconds. the white light was steady, and there were no other lights visible on the object, so it did not meet any conventional faa lighting requirements. i have a commercial drone pilots license, and my perception was this object was absolutely not any conventional drone, helicopter, or small aircraft. the object did fade slowly in intensity as it neared the horizon, which makes me believe its light was traveling through a lot of the atmosphere, unlike a lower altitude object which would have retained more of its brightness due to less air mass in the way. the sun was just below the nw horizon, so the light could easily have been sunlight reflecting from its surface, again similar to the iss, or it could have been generating its own light. the light was very white, with no obvious yellow or blue tint. in my opinion, the timing of this object is very suspicious. the huge fireworks display started just minutes after the fly-over. if ever there was a known and predictable potential audience of observers, this would provide ideal circumstances. i haven't looked yet to see if others reported it, but i didn't hear anybody in our vicinity talking about the object as it flew over, or notice anyone pointing it out. it lasted for such a short time that many people probably didn't even look up to see it, or if they did they didn't have time to think about it or to realize the difficulty in explaining what it might be. there was no noise, and no sonic boom (unless it was masked by the fireworks minutes later), but the object did have the look and feel of a super-secret and ultra-fast military fly-over, perhaps testing and quantifying public observation, perception, and reporting. the timing and location of this object leads me to believe something purposeful happened, but this is of course highly speculative on my part. such testing could also have been extraterrestrial in nature, in which case our national security could be at stake. or perhaps someone, somewhere, wants us to start thinking that way. again, just my speculation based on recent events. "