During a medical debriefing of the crew of the Apollo 12 mission, Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard “Dick” F. Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean describe their observations of instances of light flashes or “streaks of lights.” The astronauts each reported that these experiences occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep.
The NASA medical team considered whether similar phenomena reported by Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin had been attributable to exposure of the retina by cosmic rays. NASA later determined that the phenomena reported by the Apollo 12 flight crew were internal to the astronauts’ vision rather than external light sources.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of NASA's 40 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the NASA agency block it ranks #25 of 40 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 334-file archive it ranks #147 of 334.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (147 of 334 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
For the broader cluster context, this file is part of Apollo 12's "Coronal Discharges" - the Apollo 12 crew's medical debriefing in which Conrad, Gordon, and Bean were questioned about reported light flashes and "coronal discharges" seen with their eyes closed. The cluster page walks through all 1 member files with regional grouping, sensor breakdown, and standout analysis.
Anomalousness Index: 59/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
sensor quality (eyewitness only)
30 × 0.25 = 7.5
Reported by a witness with no instrumented record. The lowest tier in the rubric's sensor axis. Eyewitness perception in field conditions, even when the witness is highly credentialed, scores below capture by any instrumented modality. This report reached the federal record through NASA.
witness credibility (astronaut)
95 × 0.2 = 19.0
Astronaut witness on the official federal record - the highest tier in the rubric's witness-credibility axis. It applies to NASA crew debriefings, mission transcripts, and astronaut interviews across the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Witness credibility is only one of six components; the astronaut-witness files that also rank high on the sensor and disposition axes are the eight tied for the archive's top score of 72 - the Gemini 7 Borman audio, the Gordon Cooper interview, and the Apollo 14, 16, and 17 crew debriefings.
corroboration (single witness instrument)
60 × 0.2 = 12.0
Single-witness or single-instrument capture. This is the corroboration tier for the overwhelming majority of the PURSUE archive on the released metadata - the rubric records the honest limit of the underlying record rather than inferring multi-witness corroboration that the released summaries do not establish. A small number of files with an independent second witness or instrument score on the multi-witness/multi-instrument tier above this one.
kinematic anomaly (no kinematic data)
30 × 0.15 = 4.5
No kinematic measurements - speed, acceleration, vector - are published in the released file with sufficient precision to score on the kinematic axis. The rubric does not infer kinematic anomaly from narrative observer estimates. Every file in the archive carries this value, which is itself an observation about the disclosure: kinematic-grade telemetry was not part of what was released.
mundane explanation available (weak mundane candidate)
70 × 0.1 = 7.0
A conventional candidate explanation has been considered but is not dispositive. Every file in the archive scores this way - reflecting that the underlying release metadata systematically caveats strong determinations in either direction. The released summaries warn against reading them as conclusive analytical judgments, and the rubric respects that.
official disposition (open after review)
90 × 0.1 = 9.0
Released as open after formal review by the originating agency. The file passed through a review process and was published in that posture - a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved with no review,' because review has occurred and the open status is the agency's published conclusion.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 59/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
📝 Transcript (Whisper-generated)
Automatic speech-to-text transcript generated with OpenAI Whisper from the released audio. Machine-generated - expect occasional errors on proper nouns and radio-garbled passages. Verify anything load-bearing against the source file above.
Feel it a bit there . Uh , listen , we read this paragraph in here about these quotes coronal discharges that you guys were seeing and , and that , that completely stops us . Tell , tell us what , how this came about and who , who talked to you about it and what and what you saw . We reported it on uh somebody reported it on one of the earlier flights and uh . Some guy up , I got the letter , the paperwork somewhere , and they shipped it down to me at the Cape about two things where the VHF radio noises , which could be discharges from someplace in space , and the other one where , my father was on flight , he's got airport seeing flashes in a spacecraft at night with their eyes closed or with their eyes closed . They , they , they noticed them when they were awake at night and the spacecraft was dark , and they thought they were in a spacecraft . Yeah . But , uh , whoever this guy was said no , that's a perfectly known phenomenon you can get discharged across your eye from gamma rays or something . So he had a bunch of things , would we . Close our eyes and face the moon , you know , when we were orbiting it because it would be more , you'd get less discharges facing the moon than away from it . You don't have to be anywhere near the moon or anywhere . The first night out , bing , bing . And if you , if you keep your eyes closed and you're awake down there and it's dark and you think about it , when it happens , you can put your eye , you can , you can sit down and it's one eye . It , it's not a discharge that you see in both eyes . You really see it with one eye or the other eye , and you can see what kind it is . We had two kinds . Gets the particle either strike the eyeball perpendicular or or it discharges parallel and we'd get either a a flash like that or we'd get a streak . And uh and I'm the only people that I know is I got . I And I for some reason got it more with my left eye than my right eye , but I could tell which eye it was when I was concentrating on it . I'm trying to tell you the reason he did it because his , where he slept was always on the left side of the spacecraft . That I got switched on the crosser and I caught all the right ones . Yeah . They should have protected you , They should have all , they should have picked them all up . Surprising I'm surprised you didn't hear about this because you were asked to specifically experiment with this thing . 2 pages in the place in the water and we didn't bother because we were . Oh , there's a paper right now on the very exact thing , a new phenomenon that came out of a letter . Buzz and Neil talked about this . I , I remember their conversation about it . They thought it was something , you know , penetrating the spacecraft . What Pete described is the exact phenomenon that all three of us saw . You'd see a light , you know , just a flash out there or sometimes it'd be a a streak . And I saw them in both eyes , either eye , and , uh , I can't remember if there was one that was more predominant than the other , but I agree with Pete . It's a phenomenon that you're not seeing with both eyes . It's not something external to you . It's something that's inside or coming across you . Apparently they know about it . Apparently it's a known known phenomenon . Well , we've been looking for cosmic rays , you know , cosmic ray strikes and heavy , heavy particles , heavy nuclei that are that go through . You know , we started at clear back in Mercury taking photographs of the retina to see if you could see the streaks across the retina and stuff . We never could find any in there . And so we stopped that up early in the , well by the end of the . Right . Your eye is what , the fastest healer on your body , and if it's doing anything , you're never going to see it . By the time you get a guy back , all they're ever going to see it is if you photographed it right after a particle went by . Well , probably what , what it's doing anyway is probably hitting just a single cell and , uh , yeah , that's all I'd have to do , particularly to make this flash , you know , you hit a single cell . I saw one night because I was looking at the MVP a handrail up above and one right right along . I don't know where it went . It appeared , you know , right straight along that handrail for about that , that distance . And I just got to be looking at that , and now you can almost see him at will . That's right where you just lie there and you close your eyes . What if they don't wanna see one you open one eye and judges already see it . You didn't believe it at first that we thought it was right . You know , hey , I've been sitting pretty well . On the , uh You see that . They said in the middle of the mission , you'd wake up at night and you'd say , well , I think I ought to see , Those ladies come about one minute . Uh , let , let me ask you one more question about heart . Uh , oh , here , were , were these random , uh , distribution of these , uh , or , or did they seem to be fairly horizontal ? OK , uh , were these , were these things random or did they all seem to be in one direction ? Like were they always horizontal or were they at random ? They could be at any kind of angle . But the streaks I saw one I saw . I was gonna say that's interesting . Mine , it seemed to me I had the impression that they were always roughly in the same place and mine were horizontal . The horizontal streaks were always , if I knew where I was looking , it always seemed like the horizontal streak was a little bit above the center and it always seemed to me it went from right to left . No matter which eye it was The , uh , the , uh , discharges were more towards the center and , and it would be just a , it was just like a pinpoint of light . They closed it yet . Like somebody was flashing a light at you . That's right . Generally not too big a light , you know . Yeah . It wouldn't fill your very small lot . Yeah . Yeah . Yeah . It's a , it's an important . Is that about the same for both of you ? Is that the same , uh , reaction you had and Al , the way he described it ? What's that about 30 degrees of horizontal , but they were kind of , see , I didn't notice them from the right or left . That's pretty interesting . Yeah , but about the same , they seem to appear about the same place . Yeah , I know . I . The horizontal ones that I saw were generally above eye level was generally high . Now , I , I don't know . I can't include any other . I can't remember . I just don't remember any of them being down in the lower part of the vision . Well , I , I remember you seeing that telling you about seeing them . With his eyes open and , and other things that he centered his eye on the lights on the instrument panel . What I used to notice on the boat was when I was down there in that sleeping bag , it was pitch black down there in the hole . It wouldn't make any difference whether my eyes were open or closed . I could lay there for , I used to kill time that way , say for a half an hour . Either open them or close them and wait , and sure enough , after a while , you'd get one . And then I'd sit there for a while and say , OK , was it in the left eye or the right eye ? It'd take you a while to sort it out , and , uh , but you can usually figure out which eye it was in . Now you know what you're doing when you're supposed to be sleeping . Yeah . Yeah . And there was a comment that .