UFO on Apollo 11?Not so, says astronaut Buzz Aldrin in new report

For a long time (far too long, actually), a video has purported to be Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's astounding claim that a UFO accompanied the crew on part of the mission.  NASA Senior Scientist David Morrison debunks the claim, along with the face on Mars as a constructed artifact, in an article for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

First, the controversial video:

I've always been uncomfortable with this video. The rhythm is off, and it seemed to be a jerky collection of stitched-together scraps  versus a continuous interview. As it turns out, the video isn't shooting straight.

Morrison explains:

In an interview on the Science Channel..., Aldrin stated that he, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins saw unidentified objects that appeared to follow their Apollo spacecraft.

To get the story straight, I called Buzz Aldrin, who was happy to explain what happened. He said that his remarks were taken out of context to reverse his meaning. It is true that the Apollo 11 crew spotted an unidentified object moving with the spacecraft as they approached the Moon. After they verified that this mystery object was not Apollo 11’s large rocket upper stage, which was about 6,000 miles away by then, they concluded that they were seeing one of the small panels that had linked the spacecraft to the upper stage (any part of the spacecraft’s rocket upper stage will continue to move alongside the spacecraft, as both are floating in free-fall).

These panels were too small to track from Earth and were relatively close to the Apollo spacecraft. Aldrin told me that they chose not to discuss this on the open communications channel since they were concerned that their comments might be misinterpreted. His entire explanation about identifying the panels was cut from the broadcast interview, giving the impression that the Apollo 11 crew had seen a UFO. Aldrin told me that he was angry about the deceptive editing and asked the Science Channel to correct the intentional twisting of his remarks, but they refused. Later, Aldrin explained what happened on CNN’s Larry King Live (left, bottom) but was nearly cut off by the host before he could finish.

Morrison noted that the second half of the King interview was left out of the "confirmed UFO" video, and that it was deliberately manipulated.

It is instructive to watch this interview to see the ways the story is embellished and ultimately manipulated. Most of the talking is done by the interviewer and not Aldrin, but their comments have been edited to create the illusion of a seamless narrative. Throughout the interview we see a montage of short scenes from Apollo and other missions, including a blurry image through the window taken during a later flight. Only a critical viewer will distinguish what Aldrin said from the narrative by the interviewer or realize that the video clips are unrelated. The end product is clever disinformation, strongly suggesting—without explicitly lying—that Aldrin and his crewmates saw an alien spacecraft.

I've always been bemused by the fact that people will reject the evidence of Apollo 11,  one of the most well-documented events in history, and instead believe any video or blog post put on the internet by anyone unknown (no credentials required). Even Mythbusters decided to tackle "the lunar landings weren't real" claims, and debunked all the claims of a NASA hoax.

Morrison also takes on Richard Hoagland and his  profitable cottage-industry claims of a face on Mars, and, of course, Hoagland's claim of yet another NASA cover-up. In citing new photographs taken by NASA in response to public interest, Morrison also noted Hoagland's increasingly bizarre additional theories:

Meanwhile, Richard Hoagland was moving on and generating new claims, some even more bizarre than those associated with the face. The Wikipedia article on Hoagland mentions his assertions that “Rocks on Mars containing biological fossils were purposely destroyed by NASA’s rover Opportunity. Numerous objects surrounding the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers are in fact pieces of martian machinery. There are large semitransparent structures constructed of glass on the lunar surface, visible in some Apollo photography. There is a clandestine space program, using antigravity technology reverse-engineered from lunar artifacts and communicated by secret societies. Federal agencies such as FEMA and NASA are linked to Freemasonry.”

The CSI article  is a good read, no matter which side of the coin you're buying. Morrison is also the interim director of the new NASA Lunar Science Institute. A fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Morrison received the Carl Sagan Medal of the American Astronomical Society for his work in communicating science to the public.