Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing, 1973
- File
- NASA-UAP-D006
- Type
- Document, 2 pages
- Agency
- NASA
- Date
- 1973
- Released
- Release 1, May 8, 2026
The government's description
Apollo 17 was the ninth crewed U.S. mission to the Moon, and the sixth to land Astronauts on the lunar surface. This document is an excerpt from the Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing on January 4, 1973, in which astronaut Harrison Schmitt reported seeing light flashes. • Page 24-4. [Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt]: “We had light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when we were dark adapted. I had one which I thought was a flash on the lunar surface. That one period of time when we had the blindfolds on for the ALFMED [Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector] experiment there were just no visible flashes, although that evening, that night, before I went to sleep, I noticed that I was seeing the light flashes again.”
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Full text
Text taken from the war.gov PDF; 2 of the 2 pages are scans read by OCR software, so expect misread words. Blacked-out parts of the original stay blank, and pages with no readable words, like photos, are left out. Check anything important against the original.
Page 1 · OCR
2b4 ye Jag L MSC -07631 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION APOLLO 17 TECHNICAL CREW DEBRIEFING (U) JANUARY 4, 1973 PREPARED BY TRAINING OFFICE CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DIVISION This document will automatically become declassified 90 days from the published date. NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor- mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its release to persons outside the U.S. Govern- ment should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2. MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER HOUSTON, TEXAS eySATOR LOC DECLASSIFIED E.O. 13526, Sec 3.3(@) ‘NASA Declassification Guide Date of Guide: (M)05_(¥) 2026
Page 2 · OCR
eh-4 EVANS (CONT'D) CERNAN EVANS SCHMITT after the brightness of the fireball decreased, I could look back up through the rendezvous window and see what to me was kind of like a tunnel with a bright spot in the middle of the tunnel. Way down the tunnel, way back behind, I could see the fireball. The only unusual sighting I can recall during landing or recovery is when the CMP looked out the window and saw the superstructure of an aircraft carrier and said, "Oh, we've got a tin can with us." Well, it was kind of foggy on the windows. Transearth we had only a small crescent of an Earth and it was not feasible to do any extensive weather observations. We had light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when we were dark adapted. I had one which I thought was a flash on the lunar surface. That one period of time when we had the blindfolds on for the ALFMED experiment there were just no visible flashes, although that evening, that night, before I went to sleep I noticed that I was seeing the light flashes again. So, it just seemed to be that one interval either side of it where the light flash was not visible to myself or to the other two crewmen.