NASA-UAP-D004: Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing, 1969

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NASA
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

APOLLO 11
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
(U)

JULY 31, 1969

PREPARED BY:
MISSION OPERATIONS BRANCH
FLIGHT CREW SUPPORT DIVISION
VOL. I

[handwritten stamp]
CLASSIFICATION CHANGED TO
U
BY AUTHORITY: E.O. 11652
6/1/72
DATE 3-11-72
[signature: [illegible] D [illegible]]

GROUP 4
Downgraded at 3-year
intervals; declassified
after 12 years

This material
within the me
transmission
prohibited by

NOTICE: This document may be exempt from
public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re-
lease to persons outside the U. S. Government
should be handled under the provisions of
NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.

United States
3 and 794, the
person is

CENTER

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INDEXING DATA
DATE OPR # T PGM SUBJECT SIGNATOR LOC
07-31-69 MSC R APO (title) MSC

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COLLINS I think particularly when you get into the later flights
of extended EVA's and lunar activity, somehow the crew
must place themselves in a frame of mind of looking on
the separation of the LM as the beginning of the flight
plan and to relax, get plenty of sleep, and conserve
their energies in all the events leading up to that
point. To arrive in lunar orbit tired can create prob-
lems and it's possible to do that if you don't approach
it in the right frame of mind.

ARMSTRONG I think Mike's hit the nail on the head. We did precisely
that. We got a lot of rest and got into lunar orbit eager
to go to work and that's a particularly fortunate position
to be in.

COLLINS This is something we've talked about before the flight
and I don't know how you can get yourself in that frame
of mind but I think it is a frame of mind. You have to
get yourself convinced that there will be a nice relaxing
couple of days going to the moon.

ALDRIN The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was 1 day out
or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable
dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it.

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COLLINS
How'd we see this thing? Did we just look out the window
and there it was?

ALDRIN
Yes, and we weren't sure but what it might be the S-IVB.
We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6000 miles
away. We had a problem with the high gain about this
time, didn't we?

COLLINS
There was something. We felt a bump or maybe I just
imagined it.

ARMSTRONG
He was wondering whether the MESA had come off.

COLLINS
I don't guess we felt anything.

ALDRIN
Of course, we were seeing all sorts of little objects
going by at the various dumps and then we happened to see
this one brighter object going by. We couldn't think of
anything else it could be other than the S-IVB. We looked
at it through the monocular and it seemed to have a bit
of an L shape to it.

ARMSTRONG
Like an open suitcase.

ALDRIN
We were in PTC at the time so each one of us had a chance
to take a look at this and it certainly seemed to be with-
in our vicinity and of a very sizeable dimension.

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ARMSTRONG We should say that it was right at the limit of the reso-
lution of the eye. It was very difficult to tell just
what shape it was. And there was no way to tell the size
without knowing the range or the range without knowing
the size.

ALDRIN So then I got down in the LEB and started looking for it
in the optics. We were grossly mislead because with the
sextant off focus what we saw appeared to be a cylinder.

ARMSTRONG Or really two rings.

ALDRIN Yes.

ARMSTRONG Two rings. Two connected rings.

COLLINS No, it looked like a hollow cylinder to me. It didn't
look like two connected rings. You could see this thing
tumbling and, when it came around end-on, you could look
right down in its guts. It was a hollow cylinder. But
then you could change the focus on the sextant and it
would be replaced by this open-book shape. It was really
weird.

ALDRIN I guess there's not too much more to say about it other
than it wasn't a cylinder.

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6-36
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COLLINS It was during the period when we thought it was a cylinder
that we inquired about the S-IVB and we'd almost convinced
ourselves that's what it had to be. But we don't have
any more conclusions than that really. The fact that we
didn't see it much past this one time period — we really
don't have a conclusion as to what it might have been,
how big it was, or how far away it was. It was something
that wasn't part of the urine dump, we're pretty sure of
that.

Skipping ahead a bit, when we jettisoned the LM, you know
we fired an explosive charge and got rid of the docking
rings and the LM went boom. Pieces came off the LM. It
could have been some Mylar or something that had somehow
come loose from the LM.

ALDRIN We thought it could have been a panel, but it didn't
appear to have that shape at all.

COLLINS That's right, and for some reason, we thought it might
have been a part of the high gain antenna. It might have
been about the time we had high gain antenna problems.
In the back of my mind, I have some reason to suspect that
its origin was from the spacecraft.

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ALDRIN The other observation that I made accumulated gradually.
I don't know whether I saw it the first night, but I'm
sure I saw it the second night. I was trying to go to
sleep with all the lights out. I observed what I thought
were little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of
minutes apart and I didn't think too much about it other
than just note in my mind that they continued to be there.
I couldn't explain why my eye would see these flashes.
During transearth coast, we had more time and I devoted
more opportunity to investigating what this could have
been. It was at that point that I was able to observe
on two different occasions that, instead of observing
just one flash, I could see double flashes, at points
separated by maybe a foot. At other times, I could see
a line with no direction of motion and the only thing
that comes to my mind is that this is some sort of pene-
tration. At least that's my guess, without much to sup-
port it; some penetration of some object into the
spacecraft that causes an emission as it enters the cabin
itself. Sometimes it was one flash on entering. Possibly
departing from an entirely different part of the cabin,
outside the field of view. The double flashes appeared
to have an entry and then impact on something such as
the struts. For a while, I thought it might have been
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ALDRIN
(CONT'D)      some static electricity because I was also able, in moving
              my hand up and down the sleep restraint, to generate
              very small sparks of static electricity. But there was
              a definite difference between the two as I observed it
              more and more. I tried to correlate this with the direc-
              tion of the sun. When you put the window shades up there
              is still a small amount of leakage. You can generally
              tell within 20 or 30 degrees the direction of the sun.
              It seemed as though they were coming from that general
              direction; however, I really couldn't say if there was
              near enough evidence to support that these things were
              observable on the side of the spacecraft where the sun
              was. A little bit of evidence seemed to support this.
              I asked the others if they had seen any of these and,
              until about the last day, they hadn't.

ARMSTRONG     Buzz, I'd seen some light, but I just always attributed
              this to sunlight, because the window covers leak a little
              bit of light no matter how tightly secured. The only
              time I observed it was the last night when we really
              looked for it. I spent probably an hour carefully watch-
              ing the inside of the spacecraft and I probably made
              50 significant observations in this period.

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ALDRIN Sometimes a minute or two would go by and then you'd see
the two within the space of 10 seconds. On an average,
I'd say just as a guess it was maybe something like one
a minute. Certainly more than enough to convince you
that it wasn't an optical illusion. It did give you a
rather funny feeling to contemplate that something was
zapping through the cabin. There wasn't anything you
could do about it.

ARMSTRONG It could be something like Buzz suggested. Mainly a
neutron or some kind of an atomic particle that would
be in the visible spectrum.

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216 pgs
94
[strikethrough: CONFIDENTIAL]
NASA NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

APOLLO 11
TECHNICAL
CREW DEBRIEFING
(U)

CLASSIFICATION CHANGED TO
U E.O. 11652
BY AUTHORITY OF 6/1/72
DATE 3/14/76 [unclear: Seely D H?]

JULY 31, 1969

PREPARED BY:
MISSION OPERATIONS BRANCH
FLIGHT CREW SUPPORT DIVISION
VOL. II

GROUP 4
Downgraded at 3-year
intervals; declassified
after 12 years

This material [unclear: c]
within the mean
transmission or
prohibited by la

NOTICE: This document may be exempt from United States
public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor- and 794, the
mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re- erson is
lease to persons outside the U.S. Government
should be handled under the provisions of
NASA Policy Directive 1382.2.

CENTER

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INDEXING DATA
DATE OPR # T PGM SUBJECT SIGNATOR LOC
07-31-69 MSC R APO (Title) MSC 078-62
DUP?

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21.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS

ARMSTRONG Most of the items in Section 21, Visual Sightings, have
been previously reported.

21.4 TRANSLUNAR AND TRANSEARTH FLIGHT

ALDRIN There was only one minor observation returning from the
Moon. Looking back at it, at a time after Mars had passed
behind the Moon, there was one time period where I imagined
that the image of Mars was coming from a region where it
couldn't come from, because it was in a dark portion of
the Moon. This obviously was an optical illusion of some
sort.

ARMSTRONG I suspect that it was, in fact, just immediately adjacent
to the horizon.

ALDRIN We must have looked at it immediately after it had come
from the back side.

ARMSTRONG Yes.

21.5 LUNAR ORBIT

ALDRIN In lunar orbit, following ascent, we did note and mention
to the ground that approaching CDH when the Earth came up
above the lunar horizon, I observed what appeared to be a
fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed
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21-2
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ALDRIN
(CONT'D) to a possible laser. That seemed to be the best possible
explanation until we were coming back in the command module
approaching the Earth and were able to observe something
that gave about the same appearance. When putting the
monocular on the light source, it appeared as though it
was the reflection of the Sun from a relatively smooth body
of water such as a lake. I think we've revised our initial
conclusion as to what the source of that light was that we
saw coming from the Earth. If no one owns up to having
beamed the laser toward the Moon at that time, it was more
probably a reflection off a lake. I still think it's an
unusual phenomenon, at that distance, to see so bright a
source of light. In the film, it didn't appear as though
this was going to show up at all. The Earth was too bright.

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