Apollo 17 UFO Records
December 1972, the final crewed lunar landing. NASA released four files from Apollo 17 through the Trump PURSUE disclosure on May 8, 2026: the air-to-ground transcript flagging three periods of astronaut UAP observation, two crew debriefings (one featuring Harrison Schmitt's light-flash account), and a lunar-sky photograph showing a triangular formation that the Department of War has opened a new investigation into. Verified file-by-file against war.gov.
What Apollo 17 was
Apollo 17 was the ninth crewed U.S. mission to the Moon and the sixth to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Crew: Eugene Cernan (commander), Ronald Evans (command module pilot), and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt (lunar module pilot). Schmitt was the only professional geologist ever to walk on the Moon, and he is one of three crew members whose voices appear in the PURSUE files for this mission. Apollo 17 launched December 7, 1972 and splashed down December 19; Cernan and Schmitt spent over 22 hours on the lunar surface in the Taurus-Littrow valley over three EVAs.
Apollo 17's PURSUE files are notable because three of the four are direct astronaut-voice records - a transcript and two debriefings. The fourth is the lunar-sky photograph that the Department of War has flagged as the subject of an active investigation. Compared to the Apollo 12 PURSUE cluster, which is dominated by lunar-surface photography, Apollo 17's release is much more weighted toward the astronauts' own words.
The four files
D2Excerpt from the Apollo 17 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription. The released metadata explicitly flags three periods in which astronauts reported observing unidentified phenomena: a nine-minute period on the first mission day, a three-hour period on the second day, and a six-minute period on the third day. The transcript timestamps are recorded in mission-elapsed time and are searchable on this site.
Excerpt from the Apollo 17 Crew Debriefing for Science conducted on January 8, 1973. The portion released features Dick Henry, co-investigator on the Apollo 17 ultraviolet experiment, discussing unexpected results from the mission's X-ray and UV observations. The debriefing context is scientific rather than narrative-anomalous - the inclusion in PURSUE is what makes this excerpt notable.
Excerpt from the Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing on January 4, 1973. The portion released features Harrison Schmitt describing light flashes observed during the flight when the crew was dark-adapted. Schmitt mentions one flash he believed he saw on the lunar surface itself. This is the foundational document for what came to be known in the popular literature as "the Schmitt lunar flashes."
Lunar-sky photograph from Apollo 17, taken December 1972. The released metadata describes the image as containing three "dots" in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant, clearly visible upon magnification. The Department of War has opened a new case to investigate the image under PURSUE. The metadata notes that the photograph has been previously released and discussed by observers, with no consensus about the nature of the anomaly.
Why VM6 scores higher than the three transcripts
The three transcript and debriefing files (D2, D5, D6) cluster at 59 because their modality is voice and text - astronaut accounts and post-mission technical interviews. The rubric scores narrative reports below instrumented capture even when the witnesses are uniquely credentialed (astronauts), because the underlying record is descriptive rather than recoverable as time-series data.
The image (VM6) scores 65 because the modality is photographic - a still image showing the triangular formation that the metadata describes. Photographs score above narrative records on the rubric's sensor-quality axis because the artifact is recoverable and analyzable independently of the original observer. The 65 places VM6 in the same tier as the Apollo 12 lunar-surface photographs, which together form the second-tier NASA imagery cluster behind only the Borman/Gemini 7 audio at 72.
The fact that the Department of War "has opened a case to investigate" VM6 - the only Apollo 17 file with an active disposition described in the released metadata - is the structural reason VM6 is treated differently from the three transcripts even within the same mission.
The Schmitt light flashes in context
Harrison Schmitt's account in D6 of "light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when we were dark adapted" overlaps with the broader Apollo-era "cosmic ray visual flashes" phenomenon - flashes of light reported by multiple astronauts on multiple missions and subsequently attributed in the scientific literature to high-energy charged particles (galactic cosmic rays) interacting with the retina. The conventional explanation is well-established for the bulk of in-flight flash reports.
What is potentially distinct about Schmitt's account in this excerpt is his reference to one flash he believed he saw on the lunar surface itself. The released metadata does not say whether the surface-flash observation was investigated separately from the in-flight flashes or whether it received a different determination. Readers interested in the underlying observation should read the released excerpt directly rather than relying on either side's characterization of it.
What this Apollo 17 cluster does NOT establish
- It does not prove extraterrestrial origin for the observed flashes, the triangular formation, or any other observation. The rubric measures evidentiary weight that an encounter remains unexplained, not probability of any specific origin.
- It does not establish that the Apollo 17 crew formally reported these observations as anomalous at the time of the mission. The transcripts and debriefings were created for technical mission-record purposes; the "unidentified phenomenon" framing is the framing applied by NASA's modern PURSUE-release metadata, not necessarily the astronauts' contemporaneous characterization.
- It does not establish what the Department of War's PURSUE-era investigation into VM6 will conclude. The disposition is "open" - the case has been opened but no determination has been published in this release.
- For the in-flight light flashes specifically, conventional cosmic-ray explanations are well-established in the scientific literature for the bulk of similar Apollo-era reports.
How to verify everything on this page
- Each of the four files links above to its dedicated page on this site, where you can download the original (SHA-256 verified against war.gov), see the full released summary, and click through to the war.gov source URL.
- The 1972 mission dates, the crew identification (Cernan, Evans, Schmitt), and the mission rank ("ninth crewed U.S. mission to the Moon, sixth to land astronauts") are standard historical record. The PURSUE metadata for each file independently states "Apollo 17 was the ninth crewed U.S. mission to the Moon, and the sixth to land astronauts on the lunar surface."
- The three observation periods on D2 (9 minutes day 1, 3 hours day 2, 6 minutes day 3), the Dick Henry X-ray context on D5, the Schmitt light-flash account on D6, and the triangular-formation framing on VM6 are all sourced verbatim from the released file metadata.
- For the broader NASA category context, see /nasa-ufo-photos/. For the Apollo 12 cluster comparison, see /apollo-12-ufo-photos.
Bottom line
The Apollo 17 PURSUE cluster is a smaller release than Apollo 12's, but it has a different character: where Apollo 12 is dominated by lunar-surface photographs that NASA modified to highlight specific regions, Apollo 17 leans heavily on the astronauts' own voices - a transcript and two debriefings carrying narrative observations from Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt. The single image in the set (VM6) is the one with an active Department of War investigation. For researchers building a comparison between the two final lunar missions' PURSUE submissions, the cluster split is the story: photo-heavy on Apollo 12, voice-heavy on Apollo 17, with one anomalous photograph on the Apollo 17 side that has reopened as an active case.