This is identified as an official NASA photo, reference number NASA AS14-70-9836/37, according to the Best UFO Pictures Ever Taken on the UFO Casebook website. It was taken on the moon during the Apollo 14 lunar mission in February 1971.
They explain:
There are two avenues of thought here. Firstly, the debunkers say if these really were UFOs why would NASA release the pictures, since they are part of a conspiracy to keep this info from the public. Secondly, UFO proponents say that if NASA did NOT release them, then everyone would holler "coverup, " and they were hiding UFOs.
Well, yea. This is a cse of "darned if you do, and darned if you don't" for NASA public affairs. But what are those lights? The reference page shows two versions of the same set of lights.
Skeptics say that the lights are probably just reflection from the Apollo astronauts' landing craft or gear. The Apollo 14 astronauts did have a lot of stuff with them. Here's a mission summary:
The Apollo 14 mission, with a crew including Alan Shepard Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, and Edgar D. Mitchell, was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on January 31, 1971. It was the third mission to achieve lunar landing.
The spacecraft landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, the same area that was to have been explored on Apollo 13. Although the primary mission objectives for Apollo 14 were the same as those of Apollo 13, provisions were made for returning a significantly greater quantity of lunar material and scientific data than had been possible previously.
An innovation that allowed an increase in the range of lunar surface exploration and the amount of material collected was the provision of a collapsible, two-wheeled cart, the modular equipment transporter (MET), for carrying tools, cameras, a portable magnetometer, and lunar samples. Lunar liftoff occurred on February 6 with mission completion on February 9.
UFO? Light or reflections picked up by the 1970's vintage cameras? A hoax using an alleged NASA numbering system?
You decide.
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