UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · NASA-UAP-D002Apollo 17 Transcript, 1972
Apollo 17, the last crewed Moon landing, produced more remarks about lights and objects than most missions, and this excerpt from its air-to-ground transcript collects three of them. Read in full, the pages show the crew and mission control treating each sighting as a practical puzzle, with the separated rocket stage never far from their minds.
Fragments, flashers and a lunar flash
Hours after launch, as the spacecraft maneuvered, Ron Evans described bright, jagged fragments tumbling past the windows. Evans guessed they had come off the S-IVB stage, possibly as ice; a ground controller recalled seeing paint peeling on the rocket before launch. Gene Cernan judged them flat flakes, some perhaps six inches across, mostly drifting away.
Two days into the flight, the crew watched a distant object flashing in a regular bright-then-dull rhythm, which Cernan insisted was “something physical in the distance,” not a nearby particle. Jack Schmitt thought it was the S-IVB, its side and engine bell catching the Sun in turn, and Houston offered to work out where it should be. Later Cernan reported two more flashers he suggested might be SLA panels, the adapter panels that had housed the lunar module.
In lunar orbit, while describing the terrain, Schmitt broke off: he had just seen a flash on the surface north of the crater Grimaldi. He suggested checking the seismometers, adding that a small impact would give off a good deal of visible light.
Read alongside
The audio of the fragment sighting and Schmitt’s comments in the technical debriefing cover the same mission.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released May 8, 2026, quoted in full
Apollo 17 was the ninth crewed U.S. mission to the Moon, and the sixth to land astronauts on the lunar surface. This document is an excerpt from the Apollo 17 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription, December 1972, highlighting three periods in which astronauts reported observing unidentified phenomenon: a nine minute period on the first day, a three hour period on the second day, and a six minute period on the third day. • Day 00, Hour 03, Minute 34, Second 10 through Day 00, Hour 03, Minute 42, Second 29: o Command Module Pilot (CMP), Ronald Evans, reported observing “very bright particles or fragments” drifting and “tumbling” near the spacecraft as it maneuvered. Lunar Module Pilot (LMP), Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, described the phenomenon as looking “like the Fourth of July.” The astronauts speculated that the phenomenon may be attributable to ice or paint fragments dislodging from a separated component of the spacecraft (S-IVB) but characterized that assessment as a “wild guess.” • Day 02, Hour 18, Minute 42, Second 34 through Day 02, Hour 21, Minute 07, Second 05: o Mission Commander, Eugene A. Cernan, reported difficulty sleeping and described having observed “some sets of the streaks.” He also described an intense light flashing between his eyes, describing its intensity as comparable to that of a train headlight and characterizing it as “imposing.” Over the next three hours, Cernan described observing several flashing, rotating phenomenon that he assessed as corresponding to physical objects in space rather than a purely optical phenomenon. LMP Schmitt also reported observing similar phenomenon, though he again assessed the source of his observation to be a separated rocket stage (S-IVB). At 02:20:55:22, Cernan reported observing two additional distant flashing objects, though he assessed them as Spacecraft/Lunar Module Adapter panels (SLA panel), another separated component of the Saturn V rocket. • Day 03, Hour 15, Minute 33, Second 25 through Day 03, Hour 15, Minute 39, Second 46: o At 03:15:38:09, LMP Schmitt exclaimed that he had observed a flash on the lunar surface north of Grimaldi (crater).