BLUEBOOKSource record archive

Chronicle year

1969

1969-11-01 / Moon

In November 1969, during Apollo 12's fifth mission day, Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean reported an "all s flash" pulsing every second on both the address and information registers of the AGS, at about one-fifth the brilliance of the normal numbers. Houston attributed the phenomenon to EMI, citing similar observations during ground testing of spacecraft at Bethpage. On the sixth day, Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon reported that the Lunar Module Intrepid's blinking tracking light had stopped blinking and he could not acquire Intrepid in the sextant.

1969-07-31 / Translunar coast (approximately 1 day from the Moon)

During the Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing on July 31, 1969, Buzz Aldrin described three observations from the mission. Approximately one day from the Moon, the crew spotted an object of sizeable dimension that appeared L-shaped through the monocular and like a hollow cylinder through the sextant; ground control confirmed the S-IVB stage was 6,000 miles away, and the crew reached no conclusion about the object's size, range, or identity. Aldrin also reported recurring small flashes of light inside the darkened cabin, spaced roughly a minute apart, which he guessed were caused by some penetration of an object into the spacecraft.