Legendary Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin recalled several “unusual” phenomena he and the crew encountered during the first moon-landing mission, according to a trove of UFO-related documents released Friday.
Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, explained three specific oddities he saw during a technical crew debriefing a week after they’d safely splashed back down on Earth in July 1969.
“The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizable dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it,” Aldrin said, noting the crew speculated it was the Saturn V launch vehicle.
Another inexplicable observation “accumulated gradually,” the astronaut said, according to the documents.
“I don’t know whether I saw it the first night, but I’m sure I saw it the second night. 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…” Aldrin, now 96, said at the time.
He also observed during the return trip “a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.”
More strange sightings were reported on Apollo 12 lunar mission, the second moon-landing mission which launched months later in Nov. 1969.
Astronauts snapped photographs of five different “unidentified phenomena” from the surface of the moon, the documents reveal. A modified image released by the Department of War shows several bright lights looming in the black sky over the moon’s surface.
The Pentagon began publishing the hoard of documents on Friday, telling the public it can draw their own conclusions on “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”
“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said.
President Trump has been teasing the release of the files since February.
