Astronauts Saw Strange Things in Space: UFO Files

The United States Defense/War Department published on Friday previously classified documents related to “aliens” and UFO/unidentified anomalous phenomena sightings. The drop includes transcripts of astronauts reporting strange lights and objects during space missions in the ’60s and ’70s.

Not the Whole Story

But, according to a member of Congress who has been very invested in this issue, the interesting stuff is yet to come. Around the same time, he also said the public will never be told everything. “The 1st drop will be big but in comparison to what is coming they will be a drop in the bucket,” Tennessee’s Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said on X Friday morning. “I would say ‘Holy Crap’ is coming.”

Burchett has made many comments over the last few months suggesting the government is concealing bombshell information about non-human intelligent beings on this planet. As a member of Congress, he has received briefings that include information not available to the public. The big questions are: How much of the information that he and other members of Congress have received is legitimate, and how much of it is mis- or disinformation?

In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Burchett likened UFO-alien disclosure to MKUltra, the illegal CIA mind-control and human-experimentation program. In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered most MKUltra files to be destroyed. The order was carried out by Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who had been the longtime head of the program. Investigators on the Church Committee — the senate committee tasked in the mid-’70s with investigating questionable CIA activity — had to rely mostly on survivor testimony and the few remaining documents to get a glimpse into the program. To this day, it is generally agreed the public knows only a fraction of what the government did in it.

When it comes to “aliens” and UFOs, Burchett told Rogan, “It’s kinda like MK Ultra. …They’re not going to tell us everything. … I don’t think they’re going to give us half of what we should get.”

Apollo 11

As for what the astronauts saw while in space, the recent file dump confirms decades of rumors and reports suggesting they encountered strange and unexplainable things.

Buzz Aldrin, who was part of the Apollo 11 mission, said during a July 31, 1969 debriefing:

We were seeing all sorts of little objects going by at the various dumps and then we happened to see this one brighter object going by. … We looked at it though the monocular and it seemed to have a bit of an L shape to it.

Neil Armstrong chimed in, adding that it was “like an open suitcase.” Aldrin said it was “a very sizeable dimension.”

Aldrin said that when they looked at it through the telescope, it “appeared to be a cylinder.” Armstrong added, “Or really two rings.”

Astronaut Michael Collins described the object as a “hollow cylinder.” He said, “You could see this thing tumbling and, when it came around end-on, you could look right down in its guts.” The object changed once they adjusted the telescope, he added. “You could change the focus on the sextant and it would be replaced by this open-book shape. It was really weird.”

They kicked around suggestions that it could’ve been ordinary debris that had come off their spacecraft, maybe mylar or part of the high-gain antenna.

Aldrin reported flashes of light inside the spacecraft when he was trying to sleep:

I was able to observe on two different occasions that, instead of observing just one flash, I could see double flashes, at points separated by maybe a foot. At other times, I could see a line with no direction of motion and the only thing that comes to my mind is that this is some sort of penetration.

Armstrong said he saw it too. He said he spent about “an hour carefully watching the inside of the spacecraft.” “I probably made 50 significant observations in this period,” he noted. It was “certainly more than enough to convince you that it wasn’t an optical illusion. It did give you a rather funny feeling to contemplate that something was zapping through the cabin.”

Apollo 17

Apollo 17 crew members also reported strange sights.

Said Jack Schmitt, “We had light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when we were dark adapted. I had one which I thought was a flash on the lunar surface.”

And Gene Cernan said he saw something when they landed on the moon:

The only unusual sighting I can recall during landing or recovery is when the CMP [command module pilot] looked out the window and saw the superstructure of an aircraft carrier and said, “Oh, we’ve got a tin can with us.”

A transcript of a conversation between Apollo 17 crew members and Houston includes descriptions of fireworks-like bright objects. Ronald Evans told Houston, “We’ve got a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver.” Schmitt added:

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.

Cernan also told Houston about a strange experience he had had a few nights earlier, saying he saw streaks:

And probably the one most imposing thing I remember is — and the last one I remember before falling asleep — was the fact that there was a very bright spot that flashed right between my eyes like a very bright headlight — like a train coming at you, only with a flash. … But then, as today, I saw some that flashed and lit up the horizon and some that lit up peripherally. … And it might be interesting to know I’ve never seen it before today.

Near the end of the transcript, Schmitt said he saw a flash on the moon: “It was a bright little flash right out there near that crater. See the crater right at the edge of Grimaldi [a large crater on the moon]. Then there is another one north of it. Fairly sharp one north of it is where there was just a thin streak of light.”