NASA-UAP-D009, Apollo 17 Audio Excerpt, December 7, 1972
Official description
During the eleventh and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans report seeing small lights outside the Apollo spacecraft during transit to the moon. The crew describe bright “particles” or “fragments” as being “jagged,” “angular,” and drifting near the Apollo spacecraft and the separated Saturn S-IVB stage. The Apollo 17 crew speculate that paint chips or ice chips are likely the source of these lights and note that they “twinkle” and move away from the Saturn S-IVB stage.
✦ AI summary
This brief Apollo 17 air-to-ground audio excerpt, recorded December 7, 1972 during transit to the Moon, captures a crew member (Commander Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, or Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans) reporting bright particles or fragments drifting by as the spacecraft maneuvers. The speaker describes a "whole bunch of big ones" visible out the window, bright enough to compare to "the Fourth of July," and notes that on closer inspection the particles appear jagged and angular in shape. He then requests a comm configuration change ("Omni Charlie") before the recording is interrupted by spacecraft telemetry beep tones. NASA's official assessment attributes these lights to paint chips or ice chips shed from the spacecraft or the separated Saturn S-IVB stage, twinkling as they drift away. The remainder of the recording is severely degraded and not reliably transcribable.
Generated with AI from the official file — may contain errors.
▸Transcript
[00:00] Crew: A few very bright particles, or fragments, or something, that go drifting by as we maneuver. [00:09] [beep — spacecraft telemetry tone] [00:14] Crew: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of big ones on my window out there. Just bright — looks like the Fourth of July out my window. [00:20] [beep — spacecraft telemetry tone] [00:24] Crew: Yeah, and now you can see some of them in shape — they're very jagged, angular fragments. They're very bright. Jack, we'd like Omni Charlie. [00:59] [unintelligible — from this point through approximately 04:36 the audio is severely degraded; Whisper produced a repetitive, garbled loop that does not represent intelligible speech and could not be reliably transcribed]
Generated with AI from the official file — may contain errors.
Source: U.S. Department of War / AARO — public domain · war.gov/ufo
Entities in this document
Connected cases
NASA-UAP-D006, Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing, 1973
NASA-UAP-D028, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing, 1972
NASA-UAP-D029, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing (Continued), 1972
NASA-UAP-D005, Apollo 17 Crew Debriefing for Science, 1973
NASA-UAP-D022, Gemini 9 Debriefing, 1966
