Apollo 17: Astronauts report drifting particles and rotating flashes of light in space

During the Apollo 17 mission, which began on December 7, 1972, the astronauts reported a series of unexplained visual phenomena in space. Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt saw bright particles drifting outside their windows, which Schmitt likened to 'the Fourth of July'. Commander Eugene Cernan saw intense, rotating flashes of light that he compared to train headlights, some of which appeared to correspond to physical objects. The PURSUE release includes a photo that 'contains three dots in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image'. The entry notes that aerospace experts often point to the harsh lighting and physical conditions of space flight as causes of such apparent anomalies, such as dislodged insulation or paint flakes, ice crystals from thruster plumes and water dumps, cosmic rays, reflections, debris or camera flares, and that the crew also experienced 'light flash phenomena' in orbit and on the lunar surface, a documented biological effect of cosmic rays striking the retina. The entry cites Apollo 17 transcript extracts, the crew debriefings of January 1973, audio and medical debriefing extracts from the PURSUE release, NASA's Apollo light flash investigations and a 2026 Space.com article. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.