1969: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Recounts Apollo 11 UFO Encounter

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THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date: July 18, 1969

Sighting Time:

Day/Night:

Location: Space

Urban or Rural: –

Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) Point or extended luminous source observed at night.

Duration: 3.5-minute

No. of Object(s):  1

Size of Object(s):

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of L shaped

Color of Object(s):

Number of Witnesses: Multiple

Source: The Science Channel / Dave Stone / Credit: UFO Updates – 9/30/2005 Original Source

Summary/Description: Buzz Aldrin: “There was something out there that, uh, was close enough to be observed and what could it be? Mike (Collins) decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when it was in one position, that had a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of L shaped. That didn’t tell us very much.

Full Report

A few days ago on the Science Channel, a program called “First on the Moon: The Untold Story” was aired. About 14:30 min/sec into the program, there was a 3.5-minute segment that described a UFO encounter that Apollo 11 experienced during its flight to the moon.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that Buzz Aldrin, an Apollo 11 astronaut, had ever publicly recounted any UFO experience associated with the Apollo 11 moon mission. Also of interest, I wonder how the UFO footage that was supposedly taken from a later Apollo mission obtained?

Below is my transcription of the 3.5 minute UFO segment:

START:

Narrator: But three days and 200,000 miles into the flight, Mission Control did miss the significance of a cryptic message from Apollo 11.

Apollo 11: ‘Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with respect to us?

Mission Control: ‘Stand-by’

Narrator: The Crew required information on the current position of the S-IVB, the final stage of the rocket which had been jettisoned away 2 days earlier. This short message hid an extraordinary turn of events: Apollo 11 wasn’t alone in space.

Buzz Aldrin: There was something out there that, uh, was close enough to be observed and what could it be?

Narrator: Traveling alongside of Apollo 11 was a mysterious object like this one (a ringed object at close range is shown), filmed on a later mission. If it wasn’t part of their own rocket, it could only be one thing, a UFO.

Aldrin: Mike (Collins) decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when it was in one position, that had a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of L shaped. That didn’t tell us very much.

Dr. David Baker (Apollo 11 Senior Scientist): NASA knew very little about, um, the object reported by the Apollo 11 crew. It was obviously an unidentified flying object, but such objects were not uncommon and the history of even earth orbit space flights going back over the previous years indicated that several crews saw objects.

Narrator: Despite having a clear view of the UFO, the crew were wary of reporting it to Mission Control.

Aldrin: Now, obviously, the three of us were not going to blurt out, ‘Hey Houston we got something moving along side of us and we don’t know what it is, you know, can you tell us what it is?’. We weren’t about to do that, cause we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and who knows what somebody would have demanded that we turn back because of Aliens or whatever the reason is, so we didn’t do that but we did decide we’d just cautiously ask Houston where, how far away was the S-IVB?

Narrator: Unaware of the drama unfolding in space, Mission Control radioed the position back to Apollo 11.

Mission Control: ‘Apollo 11, Houston. The S-IVB is about 6,000 nautical miles from you now, over.’

Aldrin: And a few moments later, why they came back and said something like it was 6,000 miles away because of the maneuver, so we really didn’t think we were looking at something that far away, so we decided that after a while of watching it, it was time to go to sleep and not to talk about it anymore until we came back and (went through) debriefing.

Narrator: To this day, whatever it was that the crew saw has never been positively identified or officially acknowledged.

Dr. David Baker: There were a lot of people within the program who went off later and became convinced that UFOs existed and that lead to some concern on NASA’s part where they got the agreement of the crew never to publicly talk about these things for fear of ridicule.