Over half a century ago, NASA’s Apollo 17 crew reported seeing multiple unidentified objects in space, including three mysterious dots and sparks that resembled fireworks, according to new files released by the Pentagon.
The details were among the more than 100 documents made public on Friday when the Defense Department unveiled a new website housing all the declassified files related to UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena).
A NASA photograph, taken in December 1972 during from the Apollo 17 mission, shows “three ‘dots’ in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image,” the Defense Department said in a caption of the image.
The Pentagon said that “there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly,” but that a new, preliminary analysis indicated it could be a “physical object.”
Pentagon
The last men to walk on the moon also reported seeing bright tumbling sparks and jagged fragments that resembled fireworks.
“Now we’ve got a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver,” pilot Ronald Evans said, according to the transcript released by the Pentagon.
Pilot Harrison Schmitt reported: “There’s a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there — just bright. It looks like the Fourth of July out of Ron’s window.”
Meanwhile, mission commander Eugene Cernan said he had difficulty sleeping after observing flashing that he compared to an “imposing” train headlight.
“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,” the Pentagon says.
NASA 
The documents also include a transcript of the 1969 Apollo 11 crew debriefing in which astronaut Buzz Aldrin recounted several unusual observations.
“The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it,” he said.
Like Cernan on Apollo 17, Aldrin also described seeing flashing lights while trying to sleep.
“I was trying to go to sleep with all the lights out. I observed what I thought were little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart,” he said.
Aldrin also said he saw “a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.”
The Pentagon said additional documents and videos would be released on a rolling basis.
