Reports circulating on Facebook in late 2020 and early 2021 claim that Edwin E. ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr., the second person to walk on the moon, claims to have ‘seen strangers while he was there’ . According to reports, Aldrin “told nasa (sic) and later took a lie detector test he passed.” This claim is partly untrue, as the astronaut described how an unidentified object moves outside the Apollo 11 spacecraft, but the observation was explained shortly after the mission returned.
Recent examples of posts can be found here and here. Reports claiming this already appeared on Facebook in 2015 (here).
Some iterations here include an image of an astronaut standing near a crater on the moon, with a ball of light in the distance surrounded in red.
This image does not show Aldrin, but rather Charles M. Duke, Jr., the lunar module pilot who manned the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 and collected lunar samples near the edge of Plum Crater. The original photo, taken by Apollo 16 Commander John W. Young, can be found here by NASA. As for the light in the background, acting NASA chief historian Brian Odom (here) told Reuters by telephone that it was a lens flame from the sun (here).
Aldrin was not on the Apollo 16 mission, but rather on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, with Commander Neil A. Armstrong and command module pilot Michael Collins (here, here).
In a 2014 Ask me Anything discussion hosted by Aldrin on Reddit (here), the former astronaut answered the user’s question: “Do you believe in aliens and what is the observation you saw aboard Apollo 11?” with a description of ‘a light from the window that appears to be moving next to us’ (here).
‘There were many explanations of what it could be, other than another spacecraft from another country or another world – it was either the rocket from which we separated, or the four panels that moved away when we landed the rocket and we were nose-to-nose with the two spacecraft, ”Aldrin wrote.
Aldrin then said that when we returned to Earth, ‘we gave a brief description and explained what we observed’: the ‘sun reflecting off one of these panels’. Not knowing that the public was unaware of this information, Aldrin explained, he described his observations many years later in a television interview. Aldrin wrote on Reddit that ‘the UFO people in the United States were very angry with him’ because he allegedly withheld the information, even though what he observed ‘was not an alien’.
Allegations that Aldrin saw a UFO during the first lunar landing went viral almost three years ago and were factually verified by USA Today (here) and the Washington Post (here).
According to both outlets, the claim about the lie detector stemmed from a story in April 2018 in the British tabloid The Daily Star (here) that focused on a vocal analysis done by the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology and Sound Health, a organization in Ohio (here) that “did complex computer analysis of the astronauts’ voice patterns as they recounted their close encounters.”
Back in 2007, NASA itself responded to a person who allegedly showed up after a YouTube video that was now removed: ‘Buzz Aldrin says he saw a UFO on Apollo 11’ and asked the question: ‘Who is fibbing, NASA or the Great American Hero, Buzz Aldrin? ”(Here).
“The fibbing is being done by the makers of this video,” senior NASA scientist David Morrison wrote (here). “I just spoke to Buzz Aldrin over the phone, and he notes that the quotes were ripped out of context and did not convey the intended meaning,” Morrison said.
According to Morrison, the crew of Apollo 11 chose not to discuss the observation over the panels on the open communication channel “because they are concerned that their comments may be misinterpreted (as at present).” Aldrin reportedly told Morrison that the “discussion about the panels was cut from the broadcast call, giving the impression that they had seen a UFO.”
A transcript of the technical air-to-ground voice of the Apollo 11 mission is provided here by NASA.
VERDICT
Partly false. Although Aldrin described an unidentified object seen outside the window of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, the observation was explained as the sun reflecting on a panel that had been in flight earlier.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.