The Department of Defense finally dropped its first batch of UFO, or shall we say UAP, files on Friday. There’s no smoking guns, but there’re definitely a few things in here to turn heads.
Chief among them: photos of “anomalies” spotted during the Apollo missions.
In one Apollo 12 photograph taken by a NASA astronaut on the lunar surface, a strange light can be seen hovering above the horizon in space. Zoomed in, the UFO actually appears to comprise three distinct lights. What this means, of course, is inconclusive. Another image from the 1969 mission shows a blurry smear above the Moon’s horizon. And another taken from the landing site shows two pairs of barely visible, luminous specks.
There was also a photo from Apollo 17, which launched in 1972. In the image, which had previously been released, three dots in a triangular formation can be seen in the sky, also close to the horizon. A caption from the DoD states “there is no consensus on the nature of the anomaly,” but that a “new preliminary US government analysis suggests the image feature is potentially the result of a physical object in the scene.”
These lights were spotted by the astronauts at the time, who described the phenomena as “streaks” or “flashes” on the Moon, so they’re not simply camera artifacts.
The batch also contained a previously unreleased audio recording and full transcript of the famous “bogey” sighting made by two NASA astronauts on the Gemini VII mission in 1965.
“A bogey at ten o’clock high,” said pilot Jim Lovell. “This is an actual sighting,” he added, insisting it wasn’t their spacecraft’s booster rocket.
While fascinating, most of these sightings have been known for decades, so the dedicated Fox Mulders out there may come away unimpressed. This is the first time that some documents and photos related to them have been officially declassified, however, and there will be more to come in the weeks to follow with future batches.
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