What NASA’s Apollo Astronauts Actually Photographed — And Why It Still Matters

A look at newly surfaced lunar surface images and the declassified transcripts that go with them.

 Alejandro Rojas

The word “UFO” tends to trigger one of two responses: credulous excitement or immediate eye-rolling. But when the source material is NASA mission photography and declassified crew debriefing documents — some originally stamped Confidential — it becomes harder to dismiss out of hand.

A set of recently surfaced images from the Apollo 12 (1969) and Apollo 17 (1972) lunar surface missions has been circulating alongside newly released government UAP files. The photographs show the grey lunar terrain, astronaut shadows stretching across the regolith, and — annotated with yellow zoom boxes — small, anomalous luminous objects in the black sky above the lunar horizon. The objects vary across the frames: a vertical blue streak in one, a tight cluster of white-blue points in another, a solitary bright orb in a third, and in one striking image, what appears to be a larger rectangular luminous form.

The honest answer, scientifically speaking, is that we don’t know what they are. And that uncertainty is actually the interesting part.

NASA: Apollo 12, 1969

What the Transcripts Say

These images don’t exist in isolation. The project files include declassified NASA transcripts and crew debriefings from multiple missions, and the astronauts — trained engineers and test pilots, not given to loose talk — reported unexplained visual phenomena repeatedly.

During Apollo 17, Commander Gene Cernan explicitly radioed Houston about an object he was tracking from the spacecraft window. “I just want to emphasize,” he told Mission Control, “that it’s definitely not one of these particles that tends to look like a star out there. It’s something physical in the distance.” Houston’s response was telling in its matter-of-factness: “We don’t doubt it, Gene.” Ground controllers then worked to establish gimbal angles so they could try to locate the object through the spacecraft’s optics.

In the Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing — originally classified Confidential and declassified years later — Buzz Aldrin described observing what he characterized as a fairly bright light source in lunar orbit that the crew could not immediately identify. Neil Armstrong, methodical as ever, suggested it was likely an optical effect near the horizon. They disagreed mildly and moved on.

Earlier still, in 1965, Gemini 7 commander Frank Borman reported “a bogey at ten o’clock high” — a phrase that got Houston’s attention quickly. Borman clarified it was a separate object from both the spent booster stage and the particle field the crew was also observing. The PAO commentary on the tape release noted plainly that there were three distinct objects in question.

None of these accounts prove anything exotic. What they do establish is that credible, trained observers repeatedly reported objects they could not explain, that NASA took those reports seriously enough to document them in formal debriefings, and that the government saw fit to classify some of that documentation for years afterward.

NASA: Apollo 12, 1969

The Scientific Case for Curiosity

The skeptical position — that these photographs show film artifacts, lens flares, cosmic ray strikes on the film emulsion, or simply distant stars — is entirely reasonable and should be the starting point. Hasselblad cameras shooting on the lunar surface operated in an extreme radiation environment, and cosmic ray tracks on film are well documented. Several of the anomalies in these images have the characteristics you’d expect from that explanation: point-source brightness, slight color fringing, appearing above an otherwise featureless horizon.

But the scientific method also requires that you account for data that doesn’t fit the model. Cosmic ray strikes don’t explain an object that a crew commander tracks across his window for an extended period, gives attitude angles on, and requests optical tracking assistance for. Film artifacts don’t explain a formally documented crew report that survives in a declassified debriefing.

The intellectually honest position is not “this is proof of alien spacecraft” — it isn’t — nor is it “this is obviously nothing.” It’s that there exists a genuine category of unexplained aerial and orbital phenomena observed by some of the most carefully selected and rigorously trained humans ever put into space, and that the U.S. government has historically classified documentation of those observations. That is, on its own terms, a story worth following.

NASA: Apollo 12, 1969

Where Things Stand Now

The federal government’s posture toward UAP has shifted meaningfully in the past several years. The Pentagon established a formal UAP task force. Congress has held open hearings. Legislation has required reporting. And classified files have begun to move toward the public domain — slowly, incompletely, but measurably.

If you want to track what’s actually been released and what’s still being withheld, PentagonUFOFiles.io is worth bookmarking. The site, built by the team at Enigma Labs, tracks congressionally requested Pentagon UAP video files — what’s been released, what the military nomenclature in those files actually means (their “Decoder” section is genuinely useful for cutting through jargon), and what’s still outstanding. It’s a clean, no-nonsense resource for anyone who wants to follow the paper trail rather than the speculation.

The Apollo images discussed here represent one thread of a much longer story. Whether that story ends with mundane explanations, scientific discoveries about poorly understood atmospheric or space phenomena, or something more consequential, the only reasonable approach is to keep looking at the data carefully — and to push for more of it to be made public.

The astronauts were looking. It seems reasonable to keep looking too.

Sources:

• NASA Apollo 12 Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription (1969); Apollo 17 Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription (1972); Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing (1969, declassified); Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing (1973, declassified); Gemini 7 PAO Commentary Transcript (1965).
• Full disclosure: Alejandro is a consultant with EnigmaLabs.io

{ https://openminds.tv/ }

US government declassifies nearly 200 UAP files, including strange sightings from Apollo astronauts

The Department of Defense just declassified more than 160 documents, images and recordings related to UFO/UAP sightings dating back to before the Apollo era.

 By Brandon Specktor

UFOs have come to Washington again — this time, in a newly released tranche of more than 150 previously classified documents that cover nearly 80 years of alleged sightings.

Available to read today (May 8) on the Department of Defense website, the 162 newly declassified documents, photos, and videos cover reports of UFOs and UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena, the government's preferred name for such sightings today) dating back as far as 1947.

The reports come from agencies across the government, including the Department of Defense (DOD), the FBI and NASA. The NASA offerings include images, audio files and transcripts of Apollo-era astronauts reporting anomalous sightings in space. However, most of these materials have been available for decades and never resulted in any compelling answers.

The government is very serious about UFOs. So why are researchers being stymied?

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"The materials archived here are unresolved cases, meaning the government is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena," DOD representatives wrote on the agency's website. "This can occur for a variety of reasons, including a lack of sufficient data."

Are there any aliens?

Due to the poor data quality, the reports do not contain any compelling evidence of alien intelligence.

While NASA has not weighed in directly on the newly declassified files — save for a statement of support from Administrator Jared Isaacman — the space agency's official position remains that UAP are real but they have nothing to do with aliens.

"Are there any data supporting the idea that UAP are evidence of alien technologies? 

"No," NASA's official UAP webpage states. "Most UAP sightings result in very limited data, making it difficult to draw scientific conclusions."

Indeed, NASA conducted its own independent investigation into UAP sightings in 2022 and 2023 and found no evidence of alien activity, again pointing to low-quality data among the alleged sightings.

What did the NASA astronauts see?

Some of the most interesting documents, from a historical perspective, are files related to UFO sightings reported by NASA astronauts in the 1960s. They include a transcript and audio recording of two NASA astronauts reporting an unidentified object in Earth orbit during the 1965 Gemini VII mission.

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Just four hours into the flight on Dec. 5, 1965, astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell reported seeing a "bogey" (military slang for an unidentified aircraft) out their spacecraft window, which Borman describes as "hundreds of little particles going by."

When NASA ground control pressed Borman on whether it could be a piece of the recently detached rocket booster, the astronauts said no, maintaining that they could see the booster in a separate part of orbit. The Gemini spacecraft soon drifted away from the object, never to see it again.

The files also include photos and transcripts from the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, in which astronauts describe seeing various unidentified "flashes" and "particles of light" on the moon. These cases, like the others, remain unresolved due to a lack of sufficient data.

The underlying files have been available in public archives for decades. However, some newly released images from the Apollo 12 mission show zoomed-in boxes to highlight anomalous phenomena on the moon.

What are UAP?

So, if they're not aliens, what are UAP? According to a 2022 DOD investigation, most UAP sightings can be explained by birds, optical illusions, poor-quality photographs and foreign surveillance technology.

Many UAP files remain classified not due to the object sightings themselves, but because of the sensitive military technology used to record them, according to NASA.

The DOD plans to release additional declassified UAP documents every few weeks for the near future.

Editor's note:

• This article was updated at 6:00 p.m. ET on May 8 to clarify that all the Apollo materials have been available in public archives for decades.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

FBI Files Reveal Reports of 'Four-Foot Tall' Beings Emerging from UFOs

 Gary Manners

 Gary Manners

The recent release of a massive trove of declassified UFO documents by the Pentagon has brought to light extraordinary witness accounts from the 1960s. Among the most startling revelations is a 1966 FBI memo detailing reports of small, space-suited figures emerging from mysterious craft, reigniting the debate over extraterrestrial visitation. On May 8, 2026, the U.S. Department of War published more than 160 previously classified files — photographs, videos, and internal government memos — on a dedicated public portal, war.gov/ufo, as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

Small Beings in Space Suits

The astonishing accounts are contained in an internal FBI memo dated October 19, 1966, sent from the Bureau's San Francisco field office to Director J. Edgar Hoover. The document, reported by the New York Post, notes that "1965 was the year of the greatest number of UFO sightings" globally. Investigators tracked reports of landed craft and their occupants, with the memo stating that a few witnesses reported seeing crewmen who had landed from the objects. These entities were described as being "three and a half to four feet tall, wearing what appear to be space suits and helmets."

The sightings involved polished metal objects capable of hovering in total silence before accelerating at "fantastic speeds," ranging in color from brilliant white to dull reds and brilliant orange, with some featuring blinding, striking lights. The craft were said to maneuver with a precision that defied conventional aeronautical explanation, and multiple witnesses across different states reported near-identical descriptions of both the objects and their diminutive occupants.

• CIA Document Dump Reveals 70 Years Of US Government UFO Info
• U.S. Experts Testify Before Congress on Secret UFO Programs

Recreation of a potential anomalous sighting in the southeastern United States in September of 2023.

(U.S. Department of War / Public Domain)

Advanced Technology and Unknown Metals

The files also detailed the physical effects these objects allegedly had on their environment. Witnesses reported that the craft emitted force fields that interfered with power sources and electromagnetic equipment. In some instances, the ground beneath the objects was found scorched after they departed, and animals in the vicinity reportedly reacted with extreme agitation.

Furthermore, the FBI records suggest that wreckage from crashed saucers had been recovered on at least three separate occasions. Laboratory analysis mentioned in the files, as reported by the Times of India, described the debris as an "exceptionally hard unknown metal" and magnesium alloys. One specific material was noted for containing "thousands of 15-micron metal spheres throughout" and showing clear evidence of micro-meteorite impacts on its surface — a detail that has fascinated materials scientists and UFO researchers alike.

Archival imagery from the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon. The yellow box contains an enlarged area of the original photo in which three lights are visible above the lunar terrain.

(U.S. Department of War / Public Domain)

National Controversy and the Book That Shook America

The 1966 memo focused heavily on the public frenzy caused by the book Flying Saucers – Serious Business by Frank Edwards a prominent broadcaster and UFO researcher. The FBI monitored Edwards' claims that the US Air Force had "deliberately withheld information and given misleading explanations because it fears a mass panic by the public if the public were told the truth." The book became a bestseller and was credited with driving a surge in public reporting of sightings throughout 1965 and 1966.

Released FBI file that mentions the UFU crewmen sighting.

(US Department of War)

The document also mentions the political climate of the time, noting that future President Gerald Ford, then a congressman from Michigan, was calling for official hearings after a wave of UFO sightings swept his home state. This political pressure eventually led the Air Force to commission a $300,000 study by University of Colorado physicist Edward U. Condon to investigate the phenomena — a study that itself became mired in controversy when internal documents suggested its conclusions had been predetermined.

• The Rendlesham Forest UFO Sightings: An Unresolved Enquiry
• Beyond Top Secret: Eyewitness Accounts to the Roswell Incident

Unprecedented Transparency — With Caveats

The release of these 162 files follows an executive order from President Donald Trump directing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to declassify records related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). "The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government's understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena," Hegseth stated, according to Al Jazeera. Officials have urged caution in interpreting the files, noting that the FBI memo serves as a summary of contemporary witness accounts and popular literature rather than a government verification of extraterrestrial life.

While the files contain no definitive revelations confirming alien contact, they offer a remarkable window into the government's decades-long tracking of UFO phenomena and the deeply strange accounts reported by ordinary citizens. As the Pentagon promises to release new materials on a rolling basis, the public is left, in the words of officials, to "make up their own minds" about what these documents reveal. For those who have long suspected that the truth about unidentified aerial phenomena was being withheld, the release represents a significant, if incomplete, step toward transparency.

• Top image: Infrared still image captured of unidentified object over western United States in December of 2025.  
• Source: U.S. Department of War

By Gary Manners

References

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

10 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies About UFO

 ByShawn S. Lealos 

Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant,  CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.

Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor.

He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre.

UFOs in movies have been around since the sci-fi space epics began in old-school Hollywood, with a 1951 robot warning Earth about danger, and on to a 2022 predator that attacked beings on Earth. In the old days of cinema, seeing UFOs in movies was a groundbreaking and unsettling event, especially since a radio show reportedly sent the world into a panic with Orson Welles' War of the Worlds.

Since that time, the UFOs have been both hostile and friendly, and at the same time, humanity's response to them has been both welcoming and hostile. It is when those two dynamics are reversed that the alien movies have a chance to shine, such as when friendly aliens arrive only to have humankind attack with violence, or when UFOs show up, and humans greet them, only to end up disintegrated.

The best UFO alien movies are never really about unidentified flying objects. Instead, they are about what the arrival of these alien visitors means to the humans who witness them. They represent everything from nuclear anxiety and human smallness to exploitation or what people do when the unknown becomes much too knowable. The best of the UFO movies take these lessons and get their themes exactly right.

10. Fire In The Sky (1993)

Fire in the Sky is based on a real-life event where a man named Travis Walton claimed in 1975 that aliens abducted him in Arizona. Walton and his wife even appeared in the movie, lending to its sense of discomfort and authenticity. Walton wrote the book the film is based on, but the actual abduction itself was fictionalized and bears no similarity to the story that Walton originally told.

The film opened in 1993 and brought in $19.9 million at the box office, which was decent for a movie with a slow-burning storyline and no action scenes. The UFOs in this movie are never heroic or communicative, and they represent the unknowable fear of abduction, as well as the confusion and terror of what the aliens have planned. Fire in the Sky contains one of the best alien abduction scenes in movie history.

9. Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956)

One of the earlier UFO movies arrived in 1956 with the sci-fi movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. This movie remains best-known for the work of Ray Harryhausen, who created the stop-motion animation that created the UFO scenes. The designs match the description of flying saucers from Major Donald Keyhoe's 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space, which the movie is based on.

This was the first movie that showed the UFOs attacking and destroying national landmarks, something that Independence Day copied decades later. Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! also paid homage to the UFO design years later, proving the lasting legacy of this sci-fi classic. This movie had the UFOs as weapons of war during the era of Cold War paranoia.

8. Flight Of The Navigator (1986)

The UFOs became part of a coming-of-age story in the family-friendly Flight of the Navigator in 1986. This was one of Hollywood's first attempts to use extensive CGI in a movie, with the alien spacecraft used to create the realistic ship for the young man to pilot. This also featured one of the earliest film appearances by Sarah Jessica Parker, who befriends the young time-traveling pilot.

The UFO is also voiced by Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), and is more empathetic and curious in its delivery than it is threatening. It also makes him both a vehicle and a character, and he is a nice supporting character to young David Freeman (Joey Cramer). This mixes the ideas of alien abduction and time-travel coming-of-age stories in one of the better UFO movies of the 1980s.

7. Mars Attacks! (1996)

Tim Burton made his own alien invasion movie in 1996. In Mars Attacks!, Burton has the alien invasion show up in Las Vegas, with the cartoon-looking Martians attempting a hostile takeover. The cast here is star-studded, with names like Jack Nicholson (in two roles), Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening, and many more as they fight to survive the alien attacks.

Mars Attacks! is a different UFO sci-fi movie, as it is a comedy, with slapstick moments, some shockingly hilarious scenes with major movie stars in unpredictable situations, allowing Burton to spoof the genre, while also paying respect to what came before. The UFOs here are used as satire, but the menace and destruction match up with anything in serious movies like Independence Day.

6. Nope (2022)

Jordan Peele followed up his first two horror movies with a terrifying sci-fi movie called Nope. This was a huge production, with Peele shooting it on IMAX and delivering the story of a UFO terrorizing a small Western town. However, what made this UFO so different from others in movie history was that it was a living organism that arrived on Earth as a predatory creature feeding on living life forms.

5. District 9 (2009)

District 9 takes the idea of a UFO movie in a wildly different direction. Instead of the aliens arriving in peace or to wage war, these alien UFOs arrived with aliens looking for sanctuary and help. Directed by Neill Blomkamp and based on his 2005 short film, this features a UFO that arrived over Johannesburg in 1982 with aliens who were all sick and malnourished. They wanted help and received it.

However, the aliens were locked away in an internment camp called District 9, where they were often treated with contempt and hatred by humanity. The parallels with this movie are clear, as Blomkamp presents a vision of life during the apartheid era in South Africa. Critics praised the film, with District 9 earning four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

4. The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

The original The Day the Earth Stood Still was released in 1951, with a UFO arriving on Earth containing a robot known as Gort (Lock Martin) and an alien named Klaatu. This was one of the most impressive robots shown in movies at the time, as Gort stood over seven feet tall. The alien that showed up next, Klaatu, delivered an alien warning, saying, "Klaatu barada nikto.

This was a line that has been referenced, homaged, and spoofed several times over the years in other movies, including Army of Darkness (1992). The UFO here was not a weapon, but was instead a warning. Klaatu's words were a warning about the dangers of nuclear war. When humans shot and killed Klaatu, Earth was left with a warning: Find peace or face obliteration. This theme is one of the strongest in UFO movies.

3 Independence Day (1996)

Roland Emmerich became the master of the disaster movie throughout his career, but his masterpiece remains the alien invasion movie, Independence Day. The movie was one of the highest-grossing movies of all time when it was released, second only to Jurassic Park (1993), and it showed an alien invasion movie where the UFOs began to destroy national landmarks.

Based on Ted Chiang's 1998 novelette Story of Your Life, Denis Villeneuve directed this movie about a UFO that arrives on Earth and humans race to find out if it is there as a danger or in peace. To do this, a linguist is brought in to learn the alien language and figure out what these UFOs are trying to say. This is clearly influenced by The Day the Earth Stood Still, but with a different focus.

While The Day the Earth Stood Still was about humans who feared the unknown, Arrival was a story about the linguist, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), and how this mission ties into her own life and doubts about her future. The UFO in this movie serves as a philosophical question about what it means to be human and what a person would do if they could see their own futures.

1. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)

Released in 1977, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a UFO movie that is more about what humans expect from these unidentified flying objects rather than what the UFOs have planned for humanity. Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie follows a man who wants, more than anything, to learn if there is something more outside of Earth, and he is willing to give up everything, including his family, to find the truth.

The UFO landing site at Devil's Tower was an incredible set. The giant spacecraft hovering and landing with the giant musical communication movement is one of the most memorable moments in sci-fi movie history. This UFO sci-fi movie is about the curiosity of the unknown, and the human story makes it one of the best sci-fi movies of all time, UFO-related or not.

RELATED

{ https://screenrant.com/ }

What's in the sky? New Pentagon UFO files rekindle old mystery

A video released in the Trump administration's UFO disclosure on Friday has ignited an online debate that the mysterious object resembled beings described in the Bible.

The nearly two-minute clip, captured in 2013, shows a glowing object resembling an 'eight-pointed star,' darting through the darkness with uneven, shape-shifting arms. 

Religious leaders and US officials have suggested the object in the video was a Cherubim, angelic beings with multiple wings, faces and eyes.

Texas pastor Josh Howerton said on X that the eight-pointed object resembled the strange heavenly structures described in the Book of Ezekiel, which recounts glowing entities and mysterious 'wheels within wheels' moving beside God's throne-chariot without turning. 

'What I am trying to point out is the very possible overlap between a Biblical cosmology and some of the things you're seeing on your timeline,' Howerton shared.

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna also drew the same comparison, simply sharing an artist's impression of a Cherubim online. 

Vice President JD Vance has previously suggested that some UFO sightings may be linked to spiritual or supernatural forces rather than extraterrestrial life, framing the phenomenon through a Christian worldview that includes references to demonic entities. 

The clip of the eight-pointed object was part of the first batch of the long-awaited UFO files released on Friday, with hundreds of previously unseen videos, photographs and records published. 

The nearly two-minute clip, captured in 2013, shows a glowing object resembling an 'eight-pointed star,' darting through the darkness with uneven, shape-shifting arms

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna also drew the same comparison, simply sharing an artist's impression of a Cherubim online

'Is it just me, or does it almost resemble a Seraphim angel from the book of Isaiah?' one X user posted.

 In the Book of Isaiah, seraphim are described as powerful heavenly beings surrounding the throne of God. 

The prophet Isaiah recounts a vision in which the seraphim each had six wings, two covering their faces, two covering their feet and two used for flying, while calling out, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.'

The beings are portrayed as radiant, fearsome and deeply connected to divine power and judgment. In biblical tradition, seraphim are often interpreted as a high order of angels associated with fire, purity and worship in the presence of God.

Howerton's post sparked a huge debate on X, which quoted Ezekiel 1:15-17.

'Now, as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them, the biblical text reads.

'As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl. 

'And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went.' 

The video was captured by military infrared, showing the object darting through the darkness with uneven, shape-shifting arms

However, other users were quick to point out that the object in the video appears to show eight points, two more than what the Bible describes for the angelic beings. 

One user posted: 'Apparently, an orb somehow looks like an angel? They're really reaching here!' 

Regardless, the video was captured by military infrared, showing the object darting through the darkness with uneven, shape-shifting arms.

At one point, the military sensor zooms in as the mysterious object races through the frame, seemingly leaving behind a glowing trail.

It was seen making abrupt movements, sharply changing direction and repeatedly vanishing from view before suddenly reappearing moments later.

Officials who documented the video cautioned that the footage description was provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as proof of the object’s nature or origin.

The UFO files were made public months after the President ordered the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to declassify government records related to UFOs and alleged extraterrestrial activity.

Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett, who has long been advocating for disclosure, said on X: 'Remember the Feds told us these files didn't exist and [Donald Trump] stood up to the deep state. The 1st drop will be big, but in comparison to what is coming they will be a drop in the bucket. I would say "Holy Crap" is coming.'

After the files went live on the Department of War's website, President Trump wrote on Truth Social: 'In an effort for Complete and Maximum Transparency, it was my Honor to direct my Administration to identify and provide Government files related to Alien and Extraterrestrial Life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and Unidentified Flying Objects.

'Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” Have Fun and Enjoy!'

RELATED

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

A new tranche of “UFO files” has just been released from Washington, ranging from historical documents and space-era transcripts to recent military ISR cases from the 2020s. As expected, however, there is little genuinely new to see, and some of the material has already been public for years. And most of the released videos show little more than grainy dots moving through the sky. 

While Apollo-era images, such as the photograph catalogued AS12-49-7278, allegedly showing a flashing blue object, are widely explained as cosmic ray interference causing internal reflections within the Hasselblad camera system. 

Taken together, the newly released UFO files amount to little more than a nothingburger. The truly significant UFO material, many believe, remains hidden from the public. 

As Richard Dolan stated in a 2018 interview, the UFO subject has long been shaped by systems of control, disinformation, and selective reporting connected to the national security state. Tracing this dynamic from the era of Operation Mockingbird through Cold War media manipulation and into today’s digital information landscape suggests that credible UFO-related information has often been suppressed at the national level while simultaneously being ridiculed or sensationalized for public consumption. In this view, the phenomenon is carefully managed in a way that neutralizes its impact while allowing establishment narratives to maintain control. 

For many observers, this latest release has little to do with genuine UFO disclosure. The timing itself raises questions. Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, declining trust in institutions, growing skepticism surrounding global crises, and economies under increasing strain, some believe public attention is deliberately being redirected toward the UFO phenomenon. This has fueled a broader theory: that humanity is gradually being conditioned for the idea of an ultimate manufactured threat. 

The concept of a “universal enemy” has long appeared in conspiracy and geopolitical discussions. The theory suggests that an external threat from beyond Earth would serve as the ultimate catalyst for global unity under centralized authority. Faced with a perceived extraterrestrial danger, national borders and political divisions could rapidly lose relevance, creating the ideal moral justification for citizens to surrender privacy, freedoms, and sovereignty in exchange for “planetary security.” 

Supporters of this theory often point to statements attributed to Werner von Braun, who allegedly warned that if existing systems of control began to fail, “the alien card” could become the final mechanism used to unite humanity against a common enemy from the stars. While the authenticity and context of these claims remain heavily debated, the idea continues to resonate within UFO research circles and among critics of centralized power. 

Richard Dolan "Inside the New UFO Files: What They Actually Show" 

Richard Dolan "What The Media is Hiding About UAP" 

The Pentagon 161 UFO files from reports, images and videos can be explored Here 

If you are interested, the video below shows all of the videos from latest Defense Department release.

 

{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

Study Argues Dante's Inferno Mapped a Planetary Impact 500 Years Before Science

Dante's Inferno Mapped a Planetary Impact 500 Years Before Science

A new study presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna in April 2026 has put forward a striking argument: that the geometry of Hell as described in Dante Alighieri's Inferno closely mirrors the physical structure produced by a large planetary impact event. The research, led by Dr. Iain Stewart of the University of Plymouth, suggests that the medieval poet may have encoded real geophysical knowledge into his 14th-century masterwork, some five centuries before modern science had the tools to describe such phenomena.

Hell's Geometry and the Science of Craters

Dante's Inferno describes Hell as a vast, inverted conical pit beneath the Earth's surface, narrowing downward through nine concentric circles toward a frozen core. According to the study, this geometry matches what planetary scientists now call a "complex impact crater", the type formed when a massive asteroid strikes with enough force to cause rock to behave like a fluid. Such craters are characterized by terraced inner walls, a central uplift, and a broad, relatively flat floor, features that map with surprising fidelity onto Dante's layered underworld.

• Dante's Handwritten Notes Discovered 700 Years After His Death
• The Comet Hunters Of Göbekli Tepe

According to the study, the nine circles of hell are remarkably similar to the terraced ridges of large meteor strikes seen on Mars, such as this impact crater on the Arcadia Planitia.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ of Arizona)

The researchers note that Dante was deeply engaged with the natural philosophy of his day, drawing on Aristotle and the Arabic scholars who transmitted classical learning to medieval Europe. What the new research proposes is that this model, consciously or not, captured the essential morphology of a large impact structure, a description that would not be formally articulated by geologists for another five hundred years.

Artist's impression of the Chicxulub impact event, which produced a complex crater whose structure parallels Dante's description of Hell. (Donald E. Davis / NASA / Public Domain)

The Chicxulub Connection

The researchers draw particular attention to the Chicxulub impact crater, the 66-million-year-old scar left beneath the Gulf of Mexico by the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs. Chicxulub is one of the best-studied complex impact craters on Earth, and its internal structure — with its peak ring, terraced walls, and central basin — provides a real-world analogue for the geometry Dante described. The study does not claim Dante had direct knowledge of Chicxulub, but argues that the physical intuitions embedded in classical natural philosophy led him to a geometrically accurate model of what a large impact structure looks like.

The scale of Dante's Hell (roughly the size of the Mediterranean basin) is consistent with the scale of a very large terrestrial impact structure, though the authors acknowledge this may be coincidence rather than evidence of direct knowledge. As Heritage Daily noted in its coverage, the study "raises the intriguing possibility that Dante's vision of Hell was not purely theological but also reflected an intuitive grasp of planetary physics."

• Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Impact Obliterated a Prehistoric Settlement
• Giordano Bruno: What Led The Renowned Friar and Astrologer to a Burning Stake?

Domenico di Michelino's 1465 painting of Dante Alighieri holding the Divine Comedy, with the mountain of Purgatory and the city of Florence behind him. (Public Domain)

A Poet Ahead of His Time?

This is not the first time scholars have looked to ancient and medieval texts for evidence of sophisticated natural knowledge. Researchers have previously argued that ancient peoples at sites such as Göbekli Tepe were tracking cometary activity, and that myths from many cultures preserve memories of catastrophic impact events. The new Dante study fits into this broader tradition of "archaeo-geophysics" — the search for scientific knowledge embedded in pre-modern cultural artefacts.

Dr. Stewart presented the findings at the EGU General Assembly, one of the world's largest gatherings of earth and planetary scientists. The work has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the authors acknowledge that their hypothesis remains speculative. What they do argue is that Dante's extraordinary spatial imagination, combined with the physical intuitions of classical philosophy, produced a description of Hell that corresponds closely to the structure of a large impact crater - making the Divine Comedy a work that may be as remarkable for its science as for its poetry.

• Top image: Botticelli's Map of Hell (c. 1480–1495), a detailed diagram of Dante's Inferno showing the funnel-shaped pit of Hell.
• Source: Public Domain

By Gary Manners

References

• Heritage Daily. 2026. Dante's Inferno May Have Predicted Planetary Impact Physics Centuries Before Modern Science. Available at: https://www.heritagedaily.com/2026/05/dantes-inferno-may-have-predicted-planetary-impact-physics-centuries-before-modern-science/158020
• La Brujula Verde. 2026. Dante Described a Planetary Impact in His Divine Comedy 500 Years Before Modern Science. Available at: https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/05/dante-described-a-planetary-impact-in-his-divine-comedy-500-years-before-modern-science/
• Patel, N. 2026. Dante's Inferno Was Modelled on a Planetary Impact, Study Claims. Daily Mail. Available at: https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15801103/Dantes-Inferno-asteroid-impact-study.html
• Stewart, I. et al. 2026. Dante's Inferno: A Medieval Vision of Planetary Impact? European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2026. Abstract EGU26-14300. Available at: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU26/EGU26-14300.html

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology }

UFO expert says Trump still hiding key info despite bombshell files release: ‘Something strange…’

The release of over 160 classified UFO files raises questions about government transparency.

The documents were made public Friday after President Donald Trump ordered agencies to identify and release records connected to alien life and unidentified aerial phenomena. Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard said the disclosures were intended to provide Americans with “maximum transparency.”

But veteran UFO investigator Dennis Anderson believes the release may reveal far less than it appears.

“The government will never disclose that we are dealing with an unknown phenomenon that we cannot control or defend ourselves against,” Anderson said.

The longtime researcher also questioned whether the public could even handle complete disclosure. “Some UAP researchers think the public could handle it, I don’t,” he added.

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Anderson previously studied the mysterious 2001 “Arthur Kills Lights” sightings, in which several glowing orange oval-shaped objects were reportedly seen flying between New Jersey and Staten Island.

“There’s something that is going around all the time… It’s constantly around us, but just adapts to the time,” Anderson told the Post.

Referencing reports of “Phantom Airships” seen in the late 1800s, he suggested that mysterious sightings throughout history could be linked to the same unexplained force appearing differently across generations.

“So whatever this thing is, whatever this phenomenon is, it stays one or two steps ahead of what people actually expect something to be,” he warned.

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“If they show you enough of this stuff where you’re not seeing anything… people are just going to get tired and they’re just going to not pay attention anymore,” he said.

He further accused authorities of pretending to be transparent while withholding meaningful information. “They’re trying to cover as much as they can and still make it sound like they’re interested in giving you the information when they’re really not. It’s all smoke and mirrors stuff,” Anderson claimed.

Despite his concerns, Anderson said the mysterious phenomenon has not shown signs of targeting humanity directly. “It just is and it just does whatever it feels like whenever it wants to,” he added.

{ https://www.hindustantimes.com/ }

Buzz Aldrin’s ‘unusual’ sightings and photos from the moon landings. What we learned from the first batch of the UFO files

The astonishing collection was released to the public on Friday

Katie Hawkinson in Washington, D.C.

UFO Files: All of the videos from latest Defense Department release

The Trump administration released its first batch of files on UFOs and “unidentified anomalous phenomena” Friday morning.

The Pentagon’s trove of documents includes descriptions of unidentified objects spotted during NASA’s lunar missions and out-of-this-world FBI tips about flying saucers and extraterrestrial life. The government also released dozens of images and videos of recent sightings, including several from the Middle East region.

Officials are planning to release more files on a rolling basis. The Trump administration has celebrated the release as a “historic transparency effort,” while others have criticized the move, including former GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who described it as “propaganda.”

“I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t. I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar,” Greene wrote on X.

When asked about Greene’s comments, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The Independent: “Marjorie ‘Quitter’ Greene has never met a conspiracy theory she didn’t embrace.”

“The former Congresswoman disgracefully quit on her constituents during the middle of her term. Now, she should also quit spreading Fake News,” he added.

UFO files (Department of Defense)

Here’s what to know about the Trump administration’s UFO files:

’Unidentified phenomena’ spotted from moon’s surface during Apollo 12 mission

The newly released UFO files includes photos of several different “unidentified phenomena” taken from the moon’s surface during the Apollo 12 lunar mission in 1969.

The Pentagon said it modified some of the images to “assist viewers in identifying specific areas of interest,” adding that these highlights are “provided for contextual purposes only.”

The Apollo 12 crew was the second to land on the moon, following the Apollo 11 mission earlier that year.

Five ‘unidentified phenomena’ seen from the moon's surface during the Apollo 12 mission 

(Defense Department)

The Pentagon included these photos from the Apollo 12 mission in the latest batch of UFO files released Friday 

(Defense Department)

Buzz Aldrin’s reported ‘unusual’ sights on Apollo 11

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, described three strange sightings from the Apollo 11 mission during a technical crew debriefing conducted in July 1969, according to a transcript included in the Pentagon’s UFO files.

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

Another observation included “little flashes” inside the cabin.

“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,” he said.

Aldrin also described seeing a “fairly bright light.”

“I observed what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser,” he recalled.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin described ‘little flashes’ and a ‘fairly bright light’ during the Apollo 11 mission  (AFP via Getty Images)

Buzz Aldrin Finally Breaks Silence on What He Saw on the Far Side of the Moon

Apollo 17 crew spotted ‘bright particles’ during mission

The Apollo 17 crew reported “unidentified phenomena” to mission control during their 1972 lunar mission, according to a transcript included in the UFO files.

"Now we've got a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver," pilot Ronald Evans told mission control.

Harrison Schmitt, another pilot on the mission, added: "There's a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there – just bright. It looks like the Fourth of July out of Ron's window.”

“Yes. Now you can see some of them in shape. They're very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling,” Evans said.

The next day, mission commander Eugene Cernan reported observing a bright light.

“And probably the one most imposing thing I remember is - and the last one I remember before falling asleep - was the fact that there was a very bright spot that flashed right between my eyes like a very bright headlight - like a train coming at you, only with a flash,” he said.

The Pentagon has also opened an investigation into a photograph taken on the Apollo 17 mission.

The Pentagon is now investigating a photograph from the Apollo 17 mission, which shows three dots in a triangular formation  (Defense Department)

The image, which was already public before Friday’s release, shows “three ‘dots’ in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image,” according to the agency.

“While this photo has been previously released and discussed by keen observers, there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly. New preliminary U.S. government analysis suggests the image feature is potentially the result of a physical object in the scene,” the agency said.

“Additionally, as part of this investigation, the government has obtained the original film from the Apollo 17 mission and the results of the full NASA and DOW analysis will be released when completed.”

Strange reports found in FBI case files

The Pentagon released hundreds of pages from an FBI case file that contained reports of UFOs and flying discs documented between 1947 and 1968.

Included in this file was a handwritten letter from a Virginia man, who asked the FBI to comment on an image of a figure with its arms up and looking toward the sky.

A Virginia man asked the FBI to comment on a picture that shows a figure holding its arms up and looking upward  (Defense Department)

Another FBI report described how a young woman went to the agency’s Dallas field office in October 1967 and claimed she received “a quantity of information concerning beings from outer space.”

She refused to give her name because she would “feel like a fool if this information is not true,” the document said.

A man also once contacted the agency claiming he read a report that they “captured a saucer occupant,” according to a letter included in the case file.

He wrote: “Does the FBI really have a saucer man?”

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{ https://www.the-independent.com/news }