Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing 1969

Summary

Confidential NASA technical crew debriefing for Apollo 11, doc number NASA-UAP-D004, dated July 31, 1969 and prepared by the Mission Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division; all eleven pages were OCR'd in full. Indexing data lists Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins as signators. The crew describes a bright object seen about a day out from the Moon, initially taken to be the S-IVB even though ground control reported that stage 6000 miles away; through the monocular it looked L-shaped like an open suitcase, and in the sextant it appeared variously as a hollow cylinder, two connected rings, or an open book. The crew reached no conclusion about its size, distance, or origin. Aldrin also reports double flashes of light inside the cabin during transearth coast, and a bright light near the lunar horizon later attributed to sunlight reflecting off a lake on Earth.