Documents / Hearing transcript
This NASA document contains excerpts from the Apollo 17 air-to-ground voice transcription from 1972. The crew reports bright, jagged fragments drifting past the spacecraft after S-IVB separation, and later describes a distant flashing, rotating object that Jack thinks is the S-IVB. Gene also describes light flashes he saw with his eyes closed. Other passages cover weather over Hawaii and the Solomon Islands, and a flash seen on the lunar surface north of Grimaldi.
From the source: Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: 1972, Moon. 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).
Tape 46/4 02 18 4111 CDR CMP 02 18 41 59 CMP CDR cc 02 18 42 34 CDR CC CDR CC CDR CMP CC Okay. Is that it? Yes, I can get that, Gene. Okay, you want to take a picture of it first? Okay, POWER ... Okay, stand by. 3, 2, 1 - MARK it. POWER switch OFF. Say, Bob or Stu. Roger. Go ahead. Okay, add - to ad to today. Not last night, but - I guess the first night I was in bed - I definitely saw some of these - because I had a hard time going to bed, to start with - I saw some of the same peripheral horizon-type things you said were not the type of data you were looking for; but I also saw a - some sets of the streaks. And probably the one most imposing thing I remember is - and the last one I remember before falling asleep - was the fact that there was a very bright spot that flashed right between my eyes like a very bright headlight - like a train coming at you, only with a flash. It's difficult probably to estimate the frequency of any of those because I was in a - sort of a sleep-hazy mode. Roger. But then, as today, I saw some that flashed and lit up the horizon and some that lit up peripher ally; and I guess, as you say, that's a different kind of data, but I did see them there and they impressed me. Okay. We got all that, Gene. Okay. And it might be interesting to know I've never seen it before today. Hey, Gene, we appreciate all the data. We were just trying to make the data fit the curve; you know the old trick.
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Hearing transcript, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 16 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.