Official · Audio · NASA
Apollo 14 Crew Tried to Make Sense of Flashes in Space
After the mission, interviewers sought to pin down what the crew’s flashes of light looked like.
Released to the public July 10, 20262 min readALIENS editorial
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After the mission, interviewers sought to pin down what the crew’s flashes of light looked like.
The Apollo 14 crew discussed flashes of light they saw during the mission. Particles from space can pass through the eye and create the sensation of a flash.
High-energy particles from space can pass through the eye and strike the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye.
The information about the recording does not give each crew member’s description.
After the Apollo 14 mission, the crew sat down for a debriefing in Houston, Texas. They discussed flashes of light they had seen during the flight. Interviewers tried to determine what the flashes looked like and what characteristics they had.
Lights in space sound mysterious. But a physical phenomenon may explain what the astronauts saw: particles from space can cause flashes of light inside the eye. The debriefing focused on what the astronauts had seen, and today there is a possible explanation for the phenomenon.
In the recording, crew members and interviewers discuss the flashes of light. The interviewers try to distinguish the characteristics of what the crew saw. This is a conversation held after the mission, not a recording of the flashes themselves.
The debriefing took place at the space center in Houston after the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. The recording captures part of the conversation, in which the crew and interviewers try to make sense of the phenomenon.
High-energy particles come from space. Sometimes they pass through the eye and strike the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. This can cause a person to see a flash or streak of light.
Not every flash seen by a crew member in space has to come from a flashlight or lamp. In this case, particles from space can create the sensation of light inside the eye. This explanation helps account for why the crew discussed flashes even without a visible light source.
At the time of the debriefing, the phenomenon was relatively new. Today it is well documented and offers a possible physical explanation for flashes of light seen in space.
The information about the recording does not specify how each crew member described the flashes or what differences the interviewers identified among them. It presents a familiar explanation: high-energy particles from space can pass through the eye and cause flashes of light.
A flash seen in space may begin somewhere invisible: inside the eye.