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This is the NASA Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing dated July 31, 1969, prepared by the Mission Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division, and released by the U.S. Department of War. The confidential excerpts record Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins describing an unidentified bright L-shaped object seen about a day from the Moon, which they could not identify and suspected came from the spacecraft. They also describe light flashes inside the cabin and a bright light on Earth later attributed to reflection off a lake.
COLLINS How'd we see this thing? Did we just look out the window and there it was? ALDRIN Yes, and we weren't sure but what it might be the S-IVB. We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6000 miles away. We had a problem with the high gain about this time, didn't we? COLLINS There was something. We felt a bump or maybe I just imagined it. ARMSTRONG He was wondering whether the MESA had come off. COLLINS I don't guess we felt anything. ALDRIN Of course, we were seeing all sorts of little objects going by at the various dumps and then we happened to see this one brighter object going by. We couldn't think of anything else it could be other than the S-IVB. We looked at it through the monocular and it seemed to have a bit of an L shape to it. ARMSTRONG Like an open suitcase. ALDRIN We were in PTC at the time so each one of us had a chance to take a look at this and it certainly seemed to be with-in our vicinity and of a very sizeable dimension.
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