Documents / Official release
This 1998 NASA file holds UFO-related letters from constituents that were forwarded by members of Congress, together with NASA's handling records. Senator Olympia Snowe forwarded letters from Maine residents, including a 12-year-old who asked for Roswell documents and listed a number of reported sightings. Senator Charles Grassley forwarded a question about astronaut UFO sightings. NASA's reply says it has no UFO program and has not withheld anything. The reply enclosed a NASA fact sheet and James Oberg's article, which explains the Gemini-4 McDivitt object as the spacecraft's own booster.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Released with redactions. This collection of documents, primarily from 1998, contains draft and final correspondence from the White House and the offices of members of Congress responding to constituent inquiries about Unidentified Flying Objects, or “UFOs.” These inquiries cover a diverse range of topics, including alleged UFO sightings by NASA astronauts, questions regarding the authenticity of photos collected during U.S. missions to Mars, alleged improper withholding of information by the U.S. Government, questions regarding the appropriateness of “UFO-related” governmental spending, and calls for congressional hearings regarding the nature and existence of “UFOs.” The official responses consistently state that, circa 1998, the U.S. Government is not aware of evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrial technology, and that NASA does not actively investigate “UFOs.” The collection includes references to materials of both confirmed and unconfirmed authenticity, as provided by constituents, as well as references to historical, scientific literature addressing specific “UFO” sighting claims.
“Lovell”3 pages
"There ARE things out there! There absolutely is!"
NASA Pilot Joseph A. Walker
On May 11, 1962 NASA pilot Joseph Walker said that one of his tasks was
to detect UFOs during his X-15 flights. He had filmed five or six UFOs
during his record breaking fifty - mile - high flight in April, 1962. It was
the second time he had filmed UFOs in flight. During a lecture at the
Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in
Seattle, Washington he said : ..
"I don't feel like speculating about them. All"I know i:s what appeared
on the film which was developed after the flight." - Joseph Walker
To date none of those films has been released to the public for viewing.
Commander Eugene Cernan
Eugene Cernan was commander of Apollo 17. In a Los Angeles Times article
in 1973 he said, about UFOs:
"· .. I've been asked (about UFOs) and I 've said publicly I thought they
{UFOs) were somebody else, some other civilization."
NASA's Maurice Chatelain
In 1979 Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems
confirmed that Armstrong had i ndeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim
of a crater. Chatelain believes that some UFOs may come from our own
solar system -- specifically Titan .
"The encounter was common knowledge in NASA, but nobody has talked about
it until now. 11
" ... all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and
sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial
origin - flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name.
Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who
then ordered absolute silence ."
Pilot Walter Schirra
"I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the
astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus • to indicate the presence
of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements
were barely noticed by the general public.
James Lovell
It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8
command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to
hear: ' PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.' Even though this
happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in
those words."
The rumors persist. NASA may well be a civilian agency, but many of its
programs are funded by the
defense budget and most of the astronauts are subject to military
security regulations . Apart from the fact that the National Security
Agency screens all films and probably radio communications as well.We
have the statements by Otto Binder, Dr. Garry Henderson and Maurice
Chatelain that the astronauts were under strict orders not to discuss
their sightings. And Gordon Cooper has testified to a United Nations
committee that one of the astronauts actually witnessed a UFO on the
ground. If there is no secrecy, why has this sighting not been made
public? Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 86 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.