PURSUE Release 04: Shuttle Columbia STS-80 Photos Show Unidentified Object in Low-Earth Orbit

On July 10, 2026, the Department of War published PURSUE Release 04 – the fourth tranche under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The White House posted it with a UFO emoji. The portal now holds 334 files.

CBS News counts 40 new files in this drop: 14 documents, 19 videos, four audio recordings, and three images, drawn from the Pentagon, NASA, CIA, FBI, and the Energy Department. After a three-week stall since Tranche 03, the rolling release is moving again.

The standout historical item is not another orb video. It is three NASA photographs from Space Shuttle Columbia.

STS-80: An Unidentified Object in Low-Earth Orbit

The Department of War catalog lists three NASA image files:

NASA-UAP-D030 – STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 1, 1996
NASA-UAP-D031 – STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 2, 1996
NASA-UAP-D032 – STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 3, 1996

The official caption on war.gov/UFO states:

“During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the first photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth.”

That is the government’s own language. Not “possible debris.” Not “resolved as ice.” Unidentified object in low-Earth orbit – filed under NASA, released as unresolved UAP material.

Chris Sharp (Liberation Times) highlighted the second frame the same morning the drop went live, quoting the official description of the object near the center of the frame to the right of Earth’s limb.

STS-80 was Columbia’s longest mission – more than 17 days – and has been discussed in UAP circles for decades because of luminous shapes recorded by shuttle cameras. What is new is not that the footage existed in NASA archives. What is new is that the Department of War has now formally placed three stills from that mission into the presidential UAP disclosure system and labeled them unresolved.

The release lands days after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency has captured unexplained UFO imagery and credited Trump with ordering agencies to stop burying it. Release 04 is the first PURSUE drop since that interview – and it includes NASA orbital imagery the government still cannot classify.

What Else Is in Release 04

Yellow Sea and East China Sea (2025)

Two recent military videos – DOW-UAP-PR104 (Yellow Sea, 2025) and DOW-UAP-PR105 (East China Sea, 2025) – track unresolved objects over contested Indo-Pacific waters. NewsNation reported that one Yellow Sea clip appears to show sensor degradation over nearly five minutes of electro-optical/infrared footage. The White House separately posted the East China Sea video on X.

Gulf of America, 2019

DOW-UAP-PR115 – unresolved UAP report, Gulf of America, 2019 – was the clip the White House led with when announcing the drop.

Western United States Tic-Tac-Like Object (2020)

DOW-UAP-PR108 shows an object over the western United States in 2020 that The Debrief noted for its superficial resemblance to the 2004 Tic Tac imagery. Context remains thin – typical of AARO unresolved packages – but the visual comparison is why the clip is circulating.

Eastern United States / Roosevelt Corridor (2015)

Michael Shellenberger flagged a Navy infrared video from the eastern United States, 2015 – same era and corridor as GIMBAL and GoFast, shot by Roosevelt F/A-18 crews off the East Coast. That places another unresolved sensor track in the same operational neighborhood as the videos that restarted modern UAP politics.

Observer: “Unlike Anything” in 28 Years

DOW-UAP-PR112 (Eastern United States, 2019) includes an observer description of flight characteristics “unlike anything [the observer] had seen in 28 years for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.”

Pantex Nuclear Facility (2015)

An Energy Department file describes an unidentified object entering airspace over the Pantex nuclear facility near Amarillo, Texas, in September 2015, prompting a lockdown – another nuclear-site UAP entry in the public archive.

Los Alamos Green Fireballs (1949)

DOE-UAP-D004 is the transcript of a secret 1949 Los Alamos Conference on Aerial Phenomena – one of the earliest government-documented UAP investigations now sitting in the PURSUE archive. The catalog dates the file to March 22, 1949. Attendees included Manhattan Project–era physicists Edward Teller and lab director Norris Bradbury, meteor expert Lincoln LaPaz, plus military, FBI, and Atomic Energy Commission personnel. The subject matter was classified Secret.

The meeting was called because bright green objects had been reported over and near New Mexico’s nuclear facilities in late 1948 and early 1949 – including Los Alamos. Airline pilots, federal agents, and military personnel described objects that did not behave like ordinary meteors.

LaPaz told the room a December 12, 1948 event he personally witnessed was “most certainly not a conventional meteorite fall.” Per the transcript as reported by Newsweek and CBS:

The fireball appeared “in full intensity instantly” and held constant brightness
It traveled on a nearly horizontal path at low altitude (8 to 10 miles)
Investigators documented paths that maintained nearly constant velocity over long horizontal distances
The objects produced no sound – which LaPaz called “the most implausible feature of all,” because meteors bright enough to be seen at hundreds of miles typically generate explosive noise and animal panic
Color was a vivid green (observers clustered wavelengths around 5218 angstroms), which LaPaz compared to copper salts in a Bunsen burner – not characteristic of known meteorites
He said he could not find “anywhere among meteorists” examples of conventional meteorites behaving this way

CBS summarized the room’s conclusion bluntly: attendees tried and failed to explain the green fireballs. A prominent astronomer noted that “nothing like this … has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops.”

Release 04 also includes Project Sign progress material from 1948 and a 1949 analysis of flying-object incidents – the same era when green fireballs were being tracked alongside flying discs near sensitive installations.

”Jellyfish” / Atlantic Object (2020)

NewsNation reported that Atlantic Ocean footage from 2020 appears to match long-rumored “floating brain” / jellyfish-type UAP imagery – a blob-shaped object with narrower structures dangling beneath it.

The Stall Ends – the Pattern Continues

Release 04 breaks the silence that followed Tranche 03 on June 12. Polymarket traders had priced an 88% chance of new files by July 15. They were early by five days.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Department and agency partners “are actively working on the next release of UAP files.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth framed the drop as lockstep with Trump’s transparency directive.

The archive is growing. The STS-80 stills matter because they put NASA astronaut photography of an unresolved LEO object into the same public system as AARO’s modern sensor videos – and because the government, after nearly thirty years, is still calling the object unidentified.