UFO files live: Buzz Aldrin describes ‘unusual’ things he saw on Apollo 11 mission in newly released documents

The Defense Department included several videos in its UFO files release.

The Defense Department released “never-before-seen” files related to UFOs on Friday — a move that has been anticipated for months.

The order came just days after former President Barack Obama told podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen that aliens are “real,” but that he hadn’t seen them. Obama later clarified his comments, claiming he saw “no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

A group of Republican lawmakers has also been pushing for the files’ release. This includes Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who called Friday’s release a “massive first step in the right direction.”

The Defense Department released the FBI’s case file on UFOs and flying discs documented between 1947 and 1968.

The file includes a number of reports from people claiming to know about UFOs or extraterrestrials.

One report described how a young woman went to the FBI’s Dallas Field Office in October 1967 and claimed she received “a quantity of information concerning beings from outer space.” She refused to give her name because she would “feel like a fool if this information is not true,” the report said.

It also included letters from people inquiring about extraterrestrials, including one from a man who claimed to have read a report that the FBI “captured a saucer occupant” and wanted to know if it was true.

The FBI also received a handwritten letter from a Virginia man who asked the agency to comment on an image of a figure holding its hands up and looking toward the sky.

The Defense Department’s newly released UFO files include pictures of unexplained phenomena taken in recent months.

This includes a photo of an “unidentified object” spotted over the western U.S. in September 2025. Another “unidentified object” was spotted in the same region in December.

Former GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has once again lashed out at the Trump administration over its release of the UFO files.

“The most transparent administration in history still hasn’t released all the Epstein files or arrested anyone, but rolled out some UFO files today so you would get so excited that you forgot you are paying over $4.50/gallon because they are fighting another foreign war they said they would no longer fight,” she wrote on X.

Earlier Friday, Greene said she doesn’t care about the newly released files.

“I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t. I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar,” she wrote.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, described three strange sightings from the mission during a crew debriefing, according to documents released as part of the Defense Department’s UFO files.

“The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it,” Aldrin said.

Another observation included “little flashes” inside the cabin.

“The other observation that I made accumulated gradually. I don’t know whether I saw it the first night, but I’m sure I saw it the second night. I was trying to go to sleep with all the lights out. I observed what I thought were little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart,” he said.

He also saw a “fairly bright light.”

“I observed what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser,” Aldrin explained.

Astronaut Frank Borman reported seeing an “unidentified object” during the 1965 Gemini VII mission, according to a transcript released by the Defense Department Friday.

“We have very, very many a — it looks like hundreds of little particles going by to the left out about three or four miles,” Borman told mission control.

Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida, praised the bipartisan group of lawmakers who pushed for the Defense Department to release its UFO files.

“I’m grateful to the bipartisan group of members that have been pushing for this for the last several years. The American people have a right to know. New photos, videos and documents. We need #disclosure and we need it now,” he wrote on X Friday.

A military operator once spotted an “unidentified anomalous phenomenon” above the Strait of Hormuz, according to a mission report released in the new batch of UFO files.

The object was seen at about 1,800 feet in September 2020, the report says.

The Defense Department said it has opened an investigation into a photograph taken on the 1972 Apollo 17 lunar mission.

The image, which was already public, shows “three ‘dots’ in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image,” according to the agency.

“While this photo has been previously released and discussed by keen observers, there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly. New preliminary US government analysis suggests the image feature is potentially the result of a physical object in the scene,” the agency said.

The government has obtained the original film from the mission and plans to release the full analysis once the investigation is completed.