UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 02 · MAY 22, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · AUDIO · NASA-UAP-D008Apollo 12 Medical Debriefing - Tape 12, 1969
This audio comes from the medical debriefing of the Apollo 12 crew after their November 1969 lunar landing mission. All three men — Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean — describe flashes or “streaks of lights” they saw during the flight. It is an early chapter in what became one of the best-studied effects of spaceflight on the human body.
What the crew described
Each astronaut tied the experience to the same circumstance: lying in the dark, eyes adjusted, trying to get to sleep. That detail matters, because it points inward rather than outward — the flashes were noticed when there was nothing external to see.
The doctors on the tape had a lead to follow. Buzz Aldrin had reported similar flashes after Apollo 11 (see his technical debriefing), and the medical team discussed whether cosmic rays striking the retina might explain both crews’ reports.
NASA’s conclusion
According to the release, NASA later determined that what the Apollo 12 crew saw was internal to their own vision, not light from an outside source. Later missions tested the idea directly with a light-flash detector worn by the crew, and a later medical debriefing treats the effect as a well-documented consequence of high-energy particles passing through the eye. Bean’s separate report of flashes seen through a telescope on this mission is in the Apollo 12 transcript.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released May 22, 2026, quoted in full
During a medical debriefing of the crew of the Apollo 12 mission, Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard “Dick” F. Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean describe their observations of instances of light flashes or “streaks of lights.” The astronauts each reported that these experiences occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep. The NASA medical team considered whether similar phenomena reported by Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin had been attributable to exposure of the retina by cosmic rays. NASA later determined that the phenomena reported by the Apollo 12 flight crew were internal to the astronauts’ vision rather than external light sources.