The "lights" on the Space Station cameras
The account
Lights on the ISS live feeds were thought to be spacecraft, with NASA cutting the signal to hide what appears.
What investigators found
Reflections, debris from the station itself, satellites and transmission glitches explain the vast majority of these videos.
The story
Since 2014, when an experiment began streaming online images of Earth taken by cameras mounted outside the International Space Station, anyone can watch the planet turning below. It did not take long for viral videos to appear showing points of light crossing the screen, sometimes in groups, followed by sudden cuts in the feed.
To many viewers, the cuts were proof of censorship. The technical explanation is less dramatic. The station loses contact with its communication satellites at several points in its orbit, and the cameras switch modes automatically. As for the lights, they are usually reflections on lenses and windows, ice crystals, small debris shed by the station itself, other satellites, or lightning and cities seen from above. With no sense of distance, everything looks bigger and more mysterious.