The Apollo 17 astronauts were the last humans to set foot on the moon, and apparently the three crew members saw some very interesting sights during the mission.
According to USA Today, while scouring the lunar surface for intriguing rock samples in 1972 to take back to Earth, the astronauts also reported witnessing mysterious phenomenon in space including flashing lights that one crew member said lit up the sky “like the Fourth of July.”
The revelation was included in the new released by Trump administration on Friday, May 8 related to reports of UFOs, which are now more officially referred to as the less stigmatized "unidentified anomalous phenomena."
The release marks the latest chapter amid a resurgent public interest in UFOs, which has been spurred by a number of high-profile Congressional hearings in recent years on the topic.
A photograph from the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972 shows three mysterious dots in a triangular formation floating in the sky.
Another image, captured from the Moon’s surface during the Apollo 12 mission in November 1969, appears to show a vertical blue hazy phenomenon.
The photos are among files that were declassified on Friday by the Pentagon, as it invited the public to draw their own conclusions about decades of possible evidence regarding what it now refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt and Ron Evans reported seeing a bright object that rotated and flashed rhythmically out in space.
Cernan said, “I'm looking at what - what Jack was talking about; and it's definitely not a particle that's nearby because there is another one I can look at and get a three-dimensional comparison with.”
“It is a bright object, and it's obviously rotating because it's flashing. It's way out in the distance, as I say, because there are particles that are close by and it's obviously not one of those,” the astronaut described.
On the first day of operations, crew member Ronald Evans reported observing “very bright particles or fragments” drifting and “tumbling” nearby.
The Pentagon also included a previously released photo that shows three bright lights visible in a triangle formation above the lunar terrain that it said is now under investigation.
The release comes after President Donald Trump has previously signaled that he had tasked Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and other government officials to make public "government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)."
