Case file 001 · NASA
Narrated in Spanish. The astronauts' voices in the recordings are the original English.
In 2026 the Pentagon released forty NASA files. Almost everything has an explanation. These six cases do not.
NASA's UFO files
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Unexplained
▶ 11:15 · Part 2Skylab 3 · The red object
Unexplained
▶ 15:25 · Part 1Gemini 7 · Borman's "bogey"
Unexplained
▶ 5:08 · Part 2Gemini 4 · The object near Hawaii
Unexplained
▶ 12:51 · Part 1Apollo 16 · The flash from orbit
Unexplained
▶ 9:32 · Part 2Apollo 11 · On the way to the Moon
Unexplained
▶ 7:17 · Part 2Gemini 5 · "We never could identify it"
▶ 15:04 · Part 1Three photos from 1996
Not a sighting
▶ 7:41 · Part 1The "alien base" that was a joke
Explained
▶ 2:19 · Part 2What they explained themselvesUNEXPLAINED
What the files themselves leave unexplained, with the original page.
Skylab 3 · September 1973
MICE 
“What satellite it was and how it happened to end up in such a similar orbit, no one ever explained to us.”
Three astronauts follow a reddish light for ten minutes, less than a hundred kilometers away. They ask for it to be identified. No answer is on record.
Gemini 4 · June 1965
“I was concerned enough that I checked… to see if I had maneuver capability.”
James McDivitt sees an object near Hawaii, thinks they are closing on it and reaches for the controls to move away. The sun hits the window and he loses it.
Apollo 11 · July 1969
“We really don't have a conclusion as to what it might have been, how big it was, or how far away it was.”
On the way to the Moon they see something they think is their rocket stage. Houston tells them the stage is 6,000 miles away.
Gemini 5 · August 1965
“Pete and I thought we saw something and we didn't have time to identify it.”
Gordon Cooper, the same man who said on TV in 1962 that everything had an explanation. It is the weakest case, and he downplays it himself.
Gemini 7 · December 5, 1965
“We have a bogey at 10 o'clock high.”
Frank Borman says it over the radio and, seconds later, adds that he can also see the booster. The objects section of his debriefing has not a single line about that call.
Apollo 16 · April 1972
“The first report of a transient event of some nature that's been seen from orbit.”
A white flash, brighter than the brightest star, seen from lunar orbit. It was not like the cosmic-ray flashes.
The Shorts for this case, narrated in Spanish. Tap one to watch it here.
"We have a bogey at 10 o'clock": Gemini 7
A flash seen from lunar orbit
Apollo 11: one object, three different accounts
Millions of lights in orbit: it was their own urine
The astronaut who said everything had an explanation
A NASA scientist said "alien base"
Apollo 11 saw something on the way to the Moon
Three astronauts saw the same lights
The 27-second UFO file with no UFO in it
A red object followed Skylab and nobody told them what it was
An astronaut reached for the controls to dodge an object in orbitDocumentaries with the paperwork in front of you. Subscribe so you do not miss the next one.
The full case file
Published: September 23, 2026 · Updated: October 16, 2026
In 2026 the U.S. Department of War began releasing its files on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Forty of them come from NASA: fifteen audio recordings, sixteen documents and nine images. We listened to and read all of them. This case file sums up what they say, what they explain and what they still leave unexplained.
The program is called PURSUE and it is published by the U.S. Department of War with support from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The first batch came out on May 8, 2026; by September 18 there had been six, with 447 files from eleven agencies.
NASA contributed 40 and is the least redacted agency of all: a single redaction across 40 files.
The Department of War itself presents this material as unresolved cases. "Unresolved" means it could not be determined what it was. It does not mean extraterrestrial, and nothing in this case file claims that.
We classified each recording by what its own file says, not by what the internet says about it.
| What it is | Recordings | Which |
|---|---|---|
| NASA explains it in the same file | 6 | D008, D010, D026, D027, D028, D029 |
| Same phenomenon NASA explains (ice particles) | 2 | D011, D013 |
| The astronauts' own guess, never confirmed | 2 | D009, D012 |
| Not a sighting (a dye marker, an opinion, a joke) | 3 | D014, D023, D025 |
| Unexplained | 2 | D003A (Gemini 7) and D024 (Apollo 16) |
In brackets, the file's identifier in the official catalog and the document page. Quotes are the original English.
27 seconds of radio from the recovery team. There is no sighting at all: they are talking about a dye marker that did not deploy.
Glenn describes luminous particles around his capsule. In that year's internal memo, a NASA scientist writes that they had to come from the spacecraft itself.
"They look exactly like snowflakes to me." The same phenomenon NASA later explains: ice particles.
"Little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off." He links it to sunset himself; nobody confirms it.
An opinion on television: "I think that maybe, in fact, each and every one of them does have an explanation." Years later, Cooper would take the UFO question to the United Nations (1978).
"I am observing John's fireflies drifting away from me." NASA determined it was frozen condensation. In another recording he describes particles and, later, a xenon strobe beacon the crew had deployed; they are two different things.
James McDivitt, debriefed aboard the USS Wasp: "This satellite that I saw over around Hawaii… we were closing on it… I was concerned enough that I checked… to see if I had maneuver capability." He lost it when the sun came across the window. The Condon Report (1968) left it without an adequate explanation; years later, engineer James Oberg suggested it was the second stage of their own rocket. On the same flight, the "sky full of stars" Edward White saw was fuel particles and dumped urine, and what they took for their own booster blinking was a planet: they explain that themselves.
Gordon Cooper: "There was only one time when Pete and I thought we saw something and we didn't have time to identify it… I don't even know if it was a satellite." It is the weakest of the four cases, and he downplays it himself. On the page before, a washer and then a bolt float past the window.
On the tape: "We have a bogey at 10 o'clock high." Houston asks whether it is the booster or an actual sighting. Borman: "We have several, looks like three up there, actual sighting" and, ten seconds later, "We also have the booster in sight." A handwritten note in the file reads "UFO SIGHTING BY BORMAN (GT-7)". In the debriefing two weeks later, the section on objects seen in orbit covers the booster, a missile re-entry and two satellites, but not the December 5 call. Not mentioning it proves nothing.
A day out, they see something of appreciable size. They thought it was their rocket's last stage: "We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6000 miles away." Michael Collins sums it up: "we really don't have a conclusion as to what it might have been, how big it was, or how far away it was." In the same document, the "laser" they saw on Earth was, according to Aldrin, "more probably a reflection off a lake."
Conrad, Gordon and Bean describe flashes while trying to sleep: cosmic rays passing through the retina, as Aldrin had reported on Apollo 11. From the surface, Bean sees particles moving away and says some seem to be "escaping the Moon"; Houston replies "roger". Most likely it was what he first thought, ice or gas from the module, but nobody confirms it to him.
An astronaut describes a white flash, "brighter than the brightest star", unlike the cosmic-ray flashes ("I didn't see any of those"). In the science session it is called "the first report of a transient event of some nature that's been seen from orbit".
"Very jagged angular fragments… tumbling." "Looks like the Fourth of July." Houston asks what they might be and Cernan answers: "Well, you know, I don't know." The crew suggests paint flakes or ice, and calls it "a wild guess". On the same flight, Harrison Schmitt sees a flash on the lunar surface north of Grimaldi crater and puts it down to a possible small impact.
Two or three flashes a minute, in bed. One crew member describes them as cosmic particles: one streak going into the eye and another coming out.
Bean, Garriott and Lousma follow a reddish light for five to ten minutes, "much brighter than Jupiter". Its brightness rises and falls every ten seconds: it is rotating. From how it fades as the station enters Earth's shadow, they estimate it was no more than 30 to 50 nautical miles away, in an orbit almost identical to theirs. They reported it and asked for it to be identified. In the October debriefing, Garriott: "What satellite it was and how it happened to end up in such a similar orbit, no one ever explained to us."
Gerald Carr says they saw lights flashing outside "with a very definite motion relative to ours. We presumed that they were other pieces of Skylab, or possibly other satellites."
They do not prove there were craft from another world. No astronaut says so in these files. The Gemini 4 and Skylab 3 crews call what they saw a "satellite" from the first sentence.
They do prove that the astronauts reported what they saw plainly, that they usually worked it out themselves, and that there were times they could not. On Skylab 3 they asked for an identification, and nothing published so far records an answer.
Still to review: NASA's nine images and the more than four hundred files from other agencies.
Identifiers (D003A, D016…) are those of NASA's entries in the official catalog. Quotes come from our own transcripts of the recordings and from the original scans of the documents.