THE SOURCE
NASA-UAP-D026 and D027, the Apollo 14 post-mission crew debriefing of 18 February 1971, in two segments, and NASA-UAP-D028 and D029, the Apollo 17 post-mission medical debriefing of 21 December 1972, in two segments. Four audio recordings from the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), Houston, Texas, records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 04, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 10 July 2026.
Why this one is worth your time
Most of this archive is paperwork. These four files are voices, and long ones: nearly four hours of tape in which the Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 crews are walked through a single phenomenon, days after splashdown, by the people whose job was to pin it down. Release 02 carried seven short NASA audio excerpts; Release 04 follows them with full debriefing segments. The phenomenon under discussion arrived strange and is described in the release’s own summaries as now well documented, so the tapes hold a question and its answer inside the same programme, and you can listen to the room where the questioning happened.
What the tapes record
Four files, two sessions. The Apollo 14 pair (D026 and D027) is the post-mission crew debriefing held on 18 February 1971; the second file continues the first and, its description notes, contains some overlapping audio content. The Apollo 17 pair (D028 and D029) is the post-mission medical debriefing of 21 December 1972, also in two segments. All four were recorded at the Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, and the release’s records list run times totalling nearly four hours.
The phenomenon under discussion. All four descriptions centre the sessions on the “light flash phenomena”, which the summaries describe as a then novel, now well-documented biological effect in which high-energy cosmic rays pass through the eye and strike the retina, causing the perception of light streaks or flashes. That sentence, repeated across the four records, is the release’s own framing: new when the crews reported it, and, in the record’s words, well documented now.
The Apollo 14 pair. In the recording, crew members and debriefers discuss the phenomena, and the questioners, in the description’s words, attempt to distinguish the characteristics of the observed phenomena: timing, circumstances, what was perceived and under what conditions, worked through in a structured session.
The Apollo 17 pair. The medical debriefing’s descriptions add a count: two of the three crew members reported observing the flashes at various points during the mission, including in lunar orbit and while on the lunar surface. The records do not name which two.
Where the sessions sit in the programme. The wider sequence is documented in NASA’s programme records: crews first widely reported the flashes on Apollo 11 in 1969, and later flights carried dedicated in-flight observation sessions and detector experiments to correlate the flashes with particle strikes. The Apollo 17 air-to-ground transcript released in PURSUE’s first tranche records the same crew handling one of those experiments in flight. By the time of these two debriefings, the flashes were a standing item of post-mission questioning.
What the tapes do not record
This briefing quotes none of the audio. The release publishes the recordings without transcripts, and this site has not transcribed them; the quotations below are from the records’ official descriptions, the text the release itself provides.
The descriptions do not name the crew members heard on tape, do not say which two of the Apollo 17 three reported the flashes, and do not itemise what else the sessions cover beyond the light-flash discussions.
The four files carry two sessions from two missions. The debriefings of the other Apollo crews who reported the flashes are not part of this tranche.
Nothing in the four records connects these sessions to any unresolved case. The descriptions present the effect in the language quoted below: then novel, now well documented.
From the record
a then novel, now well-documented biological effect where high-energy cosmic rays pass through the eye and strike the retina, causing the perception of light streaks or flashes The release’s description of the light flash phenomena, repeated across all four records
The questioners attempt to distinguish the characteristics of the observed phenomena. From the official description of NASA-UAP-D026, the Apollo 14 debriefing
Two of the three crew members reported observing these flashes at various points during the mission, including in lunar orbit and while on the lunar surface. From the official description of NASA-UAP-D028, the Apollo 17 medical debriefing
Note on quotes: the records are audio recordings released without transcripts. Nothing above is transcribed from the tapes; all three quotations are verbatim from the records’ published descriptions, whose American spellings are preserved.
Where the case connects
The archive’s astronaut-audio thread runs through three releases. Release 02 Briefing 9 covers seven short NASA excerpts, including the Apollo 12 crew describing the same flashes while trying to sleep and the Mercury-era “fireflies”, with NASA’s findings alongside. Release 01 Briefing 8 covers the Apollo 17 air-to-ground transcript, in which the same crew describe light flashes in flight and the light-flash experiment appears being stowed. And Release 03 Briefing 12 is this briefing’s closest structural sibling: NASA’s post-mission debriefings from the Mercury and Gemini era, typed where these are taped, routine in bulk with specific observation passages inside. Within Release 04, Briefing 9 covers the STS-80 photographs, the other NASA records of the tranche.
Beyond the release, the effect’s afterlife is on the record too: cosmic-ray visual phenomena and crew radiation exposure remain documented concerns for flight beyond low-Earth orbit in NASA’s programme literature.
The files leave threads of their own. The second Apollo 14 segment overlaps the first, per its description, and the release does not say why the session survives in two overlapping cuts; the two reporting Apollo 17 crew members go unnamed. Any later tranche that releases the remaining Apollo debriefings, or the study records these sessions fed, lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
NASA-UAP-D026 through D029, the Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 debriefing recordings, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 04.
Listen to the tapes. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
References and further reading
- NASA-UAP-D026, “Apollo 14 Debriefing, 1971”, audio, PURSUE Release 04, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- NASA-UAP-D027, “Apollo 14 Debriefing (Continued), 1971”, audio, PURSUE Release 04, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- NASA-UAP-D028, “Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing, 1972”, audio, PURSUE Release 04, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- NASA-UAP-D029, “Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing (Continued), 1972”, audio, PURSUE Release 04, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 01 Briefing 8, on the Apollo 17 photograph and air-to-ground transcript
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 02 Briefing 9, on the NASA audio excerpts
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 03 Briefing 12, on the Gemini-era astronaut debriefings
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 04 Briefing 9, on the STS-80 photographs
- Background on cosmic-ray visual phenomena and the Apollo light-flash studies, NASA programme records