science
Pentagon Declassifies Transcripts and Images From Apollo and Gemini Missions
The Defense Department on May 8, 2026, published more than 160 documents including Apollo 17 transcripts in which astronauts described bright tumbling particles resembling Fourth of July fireworks and three dots in triangular formation above the lunar surface.
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The Defense Department on Friday launched a website that makes available more than 160 declassified documents and images related to unidentified anomalous phenomena, including original transcripts from NASA Apollo and Gemini missions in which astronauts described lights, particles and objects in space.
According to the transcripts, Apollo 17 pilot Ronald Evans reported “a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver” during the 1972 lunar mission. Harrison Schmitt said there were “a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there — just bright.
” Mission commander Eugene Cernan described flashing lights he compared to an imposing train headlight, had difficulty sleeping afterward, and over the next three hours observed several flashing, rotating phenomena that he assessed as corresponding to physical objects in space rather than a purely optical phenomenon, according to the Pentagon summary of the transcripts.
A NASA photograph taken in December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission shows three dots in a triangular formation in the lunar sky. The Pentagon noted there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly but that new preliminary analysis suggests the image feature is potentially the result of a physical object in the scene.
The release also includes a transcript from the 1969 Apollo 11 crew debriefing in which Buzz Aldrin recounted seeing an object of sizeable dimension one day out from the moon on which the crew used a monocular, observing little flashes inside the cabin spaced a couple of minutes apart while trying to sleep, and a fairly bright light source tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.
Earlier, during the Gemini 7 mission in December 1965, astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell reported a “bogey” at 10 o’clock high. Borman told mission control, “We have debris up here. This is an actual sighting,” and described “very, very many” particles going by to the left about three or four miles, some appearing to enter polar orbit.
