Summary
This excerpt from the December 1972 Apollo 17 air-to-ground voice transcription documents three periods in which the crew reported unidentified phenomena. The astronauts described bright drifting particles, repeated light flashes and rotating objects, and a flash seen on the lunar surface, with much of the activity tentatively attributed to separated spacecraft components.
Detail
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 of December 1972, highlighting three periods of reported unidentified phenomena: a nine-minute span on the first day, a roughly three-hour span on the second day, and a six-minute span on the third day.
On the first day, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans reported "very bright particles or fragments" tumbling near the spacecraft, which Lunar Module Pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt likened to fireworks; the crew speculated, as a "wild guess," that ice or paint fragments from the separated S-IVB stage could be the cause. On the second day, Commander Eugene Cernan described difficulty sleeping, intense light flashes, and several flashing, rotating objects he judged to be physical rather than purely optical, while Schmitt again attributed similar sightings to the separated S-IVB stage and to SLA panels. On the third day, Schmitt reported observing a flash on the lunar surface north of the crater Grimaldi.
The transcript was released through the PURSUE declassification.
