Apollo 17 Audio Excerpt, December 7, 1972
NASA-UAP-D009 · NASA · Dec 7, 1972 · audio · 4:35 · Release 2
What the war.gov catalog says
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.
Transcript
how about uh very bright particles or fragments or something that uh go drifting by as we maneuver?
mission controlRoger, understand.
00:11beep
commanderThere's a whole bunch of big ones on my window down here. Just bright. Looks like the 4th of July out one window.
lunar module pilotYeah, and I can see some of them in shape. They're very uh jagged, angular uh fragments uh tumbling.
mission controlRoger, do they look like fluid of some sort?
lunar module pilotNot to me. They look like pieces of something.
mission controlRoger.
00:40beep
lunar module pilotThey're very bright.
mission controlJack, we'd like Omni Charlie.
00:45beep
00:46silence 00:46-02:11
lunar module pilotBob, for the most part, uh these fragments are not uh, well, are tumbling at a very slow rate.
lunar module pilotI've tried a couple pictures of them, uh different settings, uh you may get an idea of what uh at least the patterns look like.
mission controlRoger, got you. We're all ears on these fragments if you think you can say what they might be.
02:31beep
lunar module pilotWell, you know, uh I don't know. There are a number of possibilities. Uh if you had some kind of a, I got the impression maybe they were curved a little bit, as if they might be uh
lunar module pilotuh off the side of the S-IVB. Uh that's a wild guess. Uh ice chunks, possibly, and maybe there's paint coming off of it.
02:52beep
mission controlRoger. I noticed on one trip up the elevator last week, uh one of the flags, I thought it was on the S-II, but it might be on the S-IV, looked like it was peeling. Maybe that's what you got.
mission controlAnd the S-IVB maneuver is complete.
03:08beep
lunar module pilotOkay, and the, with the maneuver complete, the fragment field is uh essentially static, except for very slight tumbling within the fragment.
mission controlRoger, copy that.
03:20beep
lunar module pilotEvery once in a while, a fragment of uh considerably higher velocity than the others goes uh across my window, but that's very rare.
mission controlRoger.
03:30beep
commanderHey, that's that uh debris I saw on my window. Jack, you see it now?
lunar module pilotYeah.
commanderAnd Bob, uh at least there there's no apparent relative motion between fragments.
mission controlRoger, understand.
03:58beep
lunar module pilotI'll take uh two pictures about uh a minute apart, if I can. And it'll be frame 70.
mission controlOkay, frame 70.
04:11beep
lunar module pilotAnd Bob, uh Gene's and my impression is that they are uh uh flat, flake-like particles. Some uh may be uh six inches across.
lunar module pilotAnd uh although there's no relative motion between the two, uh most of them seem to be uh twinkling.
lunar module pilotAnd I think, for the most part, they're all moving away from us.
The audio quality is good with some typical mission control static and Quindar tones.
Written by AI from the files. It can be wrong; check the originals.