The Pentagon on Friday released 222 newly declassified files on unidentified anomalous phenomena, and buried in the batch is audio from a 1969 post-mission medical debrief in which the Apollo 12 crew described seeing unexplained "streaks of light" while trying to sleep on their way back from the moon.
Astronauts Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean each told NASA medical staff they experienced bizarre flashes even with their eyes closed, floating in the dark of their spacecraft. The Defense Department's dedicated UFO site noted that "the astronauts each reported that these experiences occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep," the New York Post reported.
NASA's medical team eventually concluded the phenomena were caused by the astronauts' own vision rather than any external light source. But the Apollo 12 audio is only one thread in a much larger disclosure, one that includes Cold War, era sighting reports, infrared video from military sensors, and a firsthand intelligence officer's account of glowing orange objects that appeared to chase fighter jets.
Friday's release marks the second tranche of documents made public on the Department of War's website, weeks after President Trump ordered the government to release its reports on unidentified flying objects. The Trump administration had signaled this second wave was coming as the Pentagon worked through a backlog of classified material.
Among the most substantial files: a 116-page dossier tied to a series of alleged sightings and probes at a top-secret facility in Sandia, New Mexico, between 1948 and 1950. The Defense Department noted that the file alone contains "209 sightings of 'green orbs,' 'discs,' and 'fireballs' reported near the military base."
That is not a typo. Two hundred and nine sightings at a single installation over roughly two years, documented, classified, and locked away for more than seven decades.
More than 50 previously classified videos also came out Friday. One appeared to show four unidentified aerial phenomena forming up over water in Iran in August 2022, likely captured by a U.S. military infrared sensor. Another clip, from a U.S. Coast Guard infrared system, appeared to show an object flying near a plane over the Southeastern United States in April 2024.
Perhaps the most striking recent account in the batch came from a U.S. intelligence officer who described spotting mysterious "orange orbs" next to his helicopter during a mission late last year. Fighter jets scrambled to identify the objects but could not.
The officer's written report did not mince words:
"I remarked to the pilots that it seemed the same orbs we had encountered were now 'chasing' the fighters. We also observed orange orbs flaring up and down around us for several minutes, forming a distinct triangle before vanishing."
That account, a trained intelligence professional watching unidentified objects form geometric patterns around military aircraft, is the kind of testimony that for decades would have stayed buried in a filing cabinet. Now it sits on a public government website.
The Apollo 12 material extends beyond the sleep-flash audio. Fox News reported that the release includes six photographs taken from the lunar surface showing unidentified, oddly shaped lights in the sky, with one image identifying as many as five UFOs. Declassified transcripts show the astronauts describing lights that appeared to move, pulse, and leave the moon's vicinity.
One Apollo 12 astronaut described the lights as "sailing off into space." Another offered a more vivid account: "I was thinking they're dropping off from my water boiler, but it looks like some of those things are escaping the moon. They really haul out of here and just press off at the stars."
Mission command at the time suggested the lights could be electromagnetic interference. That explanation satisfied the filing requirements. Whether it satisfied the astronauts who watched objects streak away from the lunar horizon is another question.
The first batch of declassified files, released on May 8, had already included Apollo 17 crew reports of strange bright sparks in space that looked like "Fourth of July" fireworks, along with footage of a bizarre "eight-pointed star" streaking across the sky.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth framed Friday's release as a matter of public trust. The documents, photos, and videos of what are officially known as "unidentified anomalous phenomena" have long fueled speculation, he said.
"It's time the American people see it for themselves."
That is a straightforward position, and one that has drawn support from both sides of the aisle. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand praised the Trump administration's disclosure effort in a rare bipartisan moment, while members of Congress have pressed for even more material to come out.
The Department of War said it is currently working on a third release of files to be made public in the near future. The Pentagon has been working on declassifying UFO-related documents for years, but the pace has accelerated sharply under the current administration's executive order.
Rep. Tim Burchett has said dozens of unreleased UFO videos still exist, and he has promised more disclosure is ahead. If the first two batches are any guide, the remaining material may raise more questions than it answers.
The declassified files are heavy on raw reports and light on conclusions. NASA attributed the Apollo 12 light flashes to the astronauts' own visual systems. The Sandia sightings from the late 1940s sit in a 116-page file with no publicly stated resolution. The intelligence officer's orange orbs formed a triangle and vanished. The infrared videos show objects that military aircraft could not identify.
None of this proves extraterrestrial contact. But it does prove something else: the U.S. government collected, classified, and sat on an enormous volume of unexplained aerial reports, from the dawn of the Cold War through last year, while publicly treating the subject as fringe.
The question now is not whether these phenomena exist in the government's own records. They plainly do. The question is why it took a direct presidential order to get them into public view.
Taxpayers funded every one of these missions, sensors, and investigations. They deserved to see the files decades ago. Better late than classified forever.
