NASA-UAP-D009 is a NASA audio record released in PURSUE Release 02 on May 22, 2026. According to the PURSUE release, the contributing agency is NASA, the incident date is December 7, 1972, and the location is cislunar space.12
The Apollo 17 Transit Observation
The excerpt is from Apollo 17, the eleventh and final crewed mission in the Apollo program. The release note records that Commander Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans report seeing small lights outside the Apollo spacecraft during transit to the Moon. DVIDS hosts the matching public audio entry and a direct MP4 rendition of the clip.34
The crew describe bright "particles" or "fragments" as being "jagged," "angular," and drifting near the Apollo spacecraft and the separated Saturn S-IVB stage. The crew also note that the lights "twinkle" and move away from the Saturn S-IVB stage.
The Crew's Own Explanation
The release note records that the Apollo 17 crew themselves speculate that paint chips or ice chips are the likely source of these lights. The explanation is therefore the astronauts' own, captured contemporaneously on the audio rather than imposed by a later review.
What The Record Supports
NASA-UAP-D009 documents a first-person crew description of small drifting lights near the spacecraft and the separated booster stage during translunar coast. Conservatively, the record preserves the audio and the crew's own provisional explanation of paint or ice chips; it does not establish an external, unidentified object.