NASA-UAP-D009, Apollo 17 Audio Excerpt, December 7, 1972
During the eleventh and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans report seeing small lights outside the Apollo spacecraft during transit to the moon. The crew describe bright “particles” or “fragments” as being “jagged,” “angular,” and drifting near the Apollo spacecraft and the separated Saturn S-IVB stage. The Apollo 17 crew speculate that paint chips or ice chips are likely the source of these lights and note that they “twinkle” and move away from the Saturn S-IVB stage.
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 #26 of 40 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 334-file archive it ranks #148 of 334.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (148 of 334 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Related files in NASA
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
NASA-UAP-D024, “Apollo 16 Scientific Debriefing”
NASA-UAP-D025, “Apollo 16 Scientific Debriefing”
NASA-UAP-D026, Apollo 14 Debriefing, 1971
NASA-UAP-D027, Apollo 14 Debriefing (Continued), 1971
NASA-UAP-D028, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing, 1972
NASA-UAP-D029, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing (Continued), 1972
Verification
SHA-256:
This hash is the SHA-256 of the file body war.gov served on the verification date above. War.gov has re-processed some file bodies since first release (re-compression + OCR, no content removed - see /changes); we re-verify and record the change rather than silently serve a stale hash. How to check this yourself →
Source (DVIDS): https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1007872/nasa-uap-d009-apollo-17-audio-excerpt-december-7-1972
Direct video file: https://d34w7g4gy10iej.cloudfront.net/video/2605/DOD_111721698/DOD_111721698.mp4