Apollo 17 astronauts reported a string of unexplained lights and objects around the Moon during their 7–14 December 1972 mission, according to newly released Pentagon UAP files, while a long-time friend of commander Eugene Cernan now claims the crew received a chilling mental warning from aliens to 'never return.'

For context, Apollo 17 was NASA's final crewed Moon landing and the last time humans walked on the lunar surface. The official story for half a century has been prosaic: budget cuts, shifting political priorities and the winding down of the Apollo programme. Yet the mission has long attracted conspiracy theories about why it really marked the end.

The fresh US government documents, coupled with the claim from Japanese NASA historian Takano Jousen about a supposed 'no trespassing' order from extraterrestrials, have given that speculation a new jolt.

🚨 ALIENS ORDERED NASA OFF THE MOON AFTER APOLLO 17? "NEVER RETURN" WARNING EXPOSED! 👽🌕🔥Fresh Pentagon UAP files reveal Apollo 17 (Dec 7-14, 1972) encountered multiple UFOs: flashing lights, rotating objects, and "train-headlight" phenomena watched for 3 hours by Commander…pic.twitter.com/Ch3JcdCvBR

ThePentagon's new cache, published on 8 May, includes transcripts from Apollo 17 that read less like dry engineering logs and more like an increasingly unsettled crew trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

On their first day of operations, command module pilot Ronald Evans radioed Houston about 'very bright particles or fragments' drifting and tumbling near the spacecraft. Lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt went further, likening the spectacle to fireworks: it looked, he said, 'like the Fourth of July.'

The second day brought something stranger. Commander Eugene Cernan reported 'sets of the streaks' accompanied by an intense flash that repeatedly hit his field of vision, which he compared to a train headlight. Over roughly three hours he watched more bursts of light and what he described as a rotating phenomenon that appeared to match up with objects in space, though he could not pin down what they were.

All 28 UFO Videos declassified by The Pentagon today 👽🛸🇺🇸A full compilationpic.twitter.com/7lzoF7S4vP

On day three, Schmitt shouted out another sighting: a flash on the lunar surface north of the crater Grimaldi. At several points, the astronauts tried to talk themselves back into the familiar. They suggested the Saturn V rocket's separated stages or other mission hardware might be responsible for at least some of the debris and glints they were tracking.

None of this, on its own, proves anything more exotic than the well-known chaos of operating a giant machine in space. What gives it fresh edge is what sits alongside it.

Source: International Business Times UK