The declassification of UFO files promoted by the United States government, under the decision of President Donald Trump, revealed details about a specific case that occurred during the Apollo 17 mission
.
These are technical air-to-ground communication records in which astronauts reported the presence of unidentified phenomena at different times during the trip.
The document dates from December 1972 and details three specific periods in which the crew detected unusual situations.
The dialogue between astronauts.
The strange cases
The first of these occurred on the initial day of the mission, during an interval of nine minutes. At that time, the pilot of the command module, Ronald Evans, reported the presence of “very bright particles or fragments” that moved and “circled” near the ship while performing maneuvers
.
Simultaneously, the lunar module pilot, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, described the scene with a direct comparison: “There are a lot of big lights in my downstairs window, they're very bright. From Ron's window, it looks like the Fourth of July.”
Both astronauts evaluated the possibility that they were fragments of ice or paint released from the S-IVB stage of the rocket, although they defined that explanation as a “crazy assumption”.
The second episode lasted approximately three hours, on the second day of the mission. There, Commander Eugene Cernan reported difficulty sleeping and described observing “some sets of stripes”, along with intense light appearing in front of his eyes. According to his testimony, the luminosity was comparable to that of a train headlight and he described it as “impressive”
. Photo of UFOs on the Moon.
During that same period, Cernan detailed the presence of rotating and flashing phenomena, which he evaluated
as physical objects in space.
Schmitt also reported similar observations, although in that case he considered that they could be related to a previously separate stage of the rocket. Later, Cernan reported the detection of two intermittent objects in the distance, which he linked to panels of the lunar module or the spacecraft
.
The third and last record occurred the day after the mission, within a period of six minutes. At the time, Schmitt reported observing a flash on the lunar surface, specifically north of the
Grimaldi crater.
The declassified documents directly show how the crew recorded these events in real time, including detailed descriptions and own assessments of their possible origin.
Throughout the three episodes, astronauts identified bright lights, moving objects and flashes both in the spacecraft's environment and on the surface of the Moon.
The publication of these files is part of a larger set of documents on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), and, as officially reported, seeks to provide transparency about records that remained classified for decades.
