The US Department of Defense (DoD) released a trove of files on UFOs. The files include images along with government documents and correspondence, some of which were classified until now.

“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” said US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a statement on where the files are displayed.

The images are mostly photographs taken by members of the US military showing small dots or indistinct shapes in the sky. Of more interest are the hundreds of pages of files relating to UFOs, also called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), from the FBI, Air Force and various other government departments.

Many of the pages are correspondence between the government and concerned members of the public. Some are pamphlets from special-interest groups such as the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America or the Fraternity of Cosmic Sons and Daughters, and others are requests from children to the head of the FBI – many to J. Edgar Hoover, who served in the role from 1935 to 1972 – for help with school projects.

Letters from UFO enthusiasts through the years, from the 1940s to now, show remarkable similarities in the sentiments they express: a feeling that UFO sightings have been mounting, that the government must be hiding something and that they are sure to be persecuted for saying as much.

The responses to these letters, and the internal government communications that have been released, seem to show something different – many thousands of reports of UFO sightings have been taken seriously and investigated, and there has been no indication that any of them have been extraterrestrial. This mirrors the 2023 results from NASA’s task force on UAPs, which found that normal aircraft and weather phenomena account for most reports, with only a few remaining unexplained due to blurry images and low-quality data.

The documents that have made the biggest splash are images and transcripts from NASA’s Gemini 7, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, each referencing some bright lights that the astronauts saw in space and could not explain. Most of these sightings have already been investigated and explained as micrometeoroid impacts on the moon or the spacecraft, bits of floating debris, and camera or film defects, although a few have remained unexplained thus far.

The DoD has opened a new investigation into the images that remain unexplained, and has been directed by the administration of President Donald Trump to “conduct separate reporting” on any unresolved UAP cases. According to the website, this is only the first of many rolling document drops expected “every few weeks” as more files are found and declassified.

On 6 April, the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission flew in a loop around the far side of the moon. They travelled more than 406,700 kilometres from Earth, further than any humans have travelled before.

The four crew members – Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen – alternated shifts at the Orion capsule’s windows looking out at Earth and the moon (above). The reflection of sunlight off Earth’s surface, called earthshine, was so bright that they covered one of the windows with a spare shirt.

As they passed behind the moon, the astronauts were treated to a view of areas that had never before been seen by human eyes, such as the entirety of a crater called Orientale basin (below). The dark patch at the centre of the crater is dried lava from an eruption billions of years ago. The astronauts proposed new names for two smaller craters near Orientale: Integrity, after their spacecraft, and Carroll, after Wiseman’s late wife.

Over the course of the mission, the phases of both Earth and the moon changed rapidly from the perspective of the spacecraft. “The moon is a gibbous and the Earth is a crescent,” Hansen said at one point. When Orion started to circle to the moon’s far side, the crescent Earth set behind the moon (below).

Glover expressed a particular fascination with the moon’s terminator, the line between day and night. At that line, the sunlight hits the ground at an acute angle that casts long shadows, accentuating the terrain and revealing details that wouldn’t be visible under full illumination (below). “There is just so much magic in the terminator – the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes [where] you’d fall straight to the centre of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It’s just so visually captivating,” he said.

While on the far side, the astronauts could not communicate with mission control on Earth, but they continued taking pictures and dictating notes into voice recorders. At one point, they witnessed a unique solar eclipse that lasted nearly an hour (below). The sun was hidden entirely behind the moon, while the side of the moon facing Earth remained illuminated by earthshine.

Free newsletter

Sign up to Launchpad

Sign up to newsletter

Now, their flyby a success, the astronauts are on their way back to Earth. They are expected to arrive on 10 April, when Orion will splash down off the coast of California.

The history and future of space exploration: US

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the heart of the US’s space and astronomy landmarks, designed for curious minds and lifelong learners.

Read more

For the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, humans have visited the moon. On 6 April, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission flew around the far side of the moon, taking them the furthest humans have ever travelled from Earth.

As they surpassed the distance record of 400,171 kilometres set by the crew of the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, astronaut Jeremy Hansen made it clear that this flight is just the beginning. “We most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,” he said during the NASA livestream of the flight. The Artemis astronauts also made two proposals of names for newfound craters: Integrity, after the Orion capsule carrying them around the moon, and Carroll, after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife.

Over the course of the flyby, the astronauts swapped between staying at the windows to observe and photograph the moon and remaining in the cabin of Orion to stay in communication with mission control in Houston, Texas. The crew members are NASA astronauts Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Hansen.

As the capsule circled behind the moon, the sun appeared smaller than the moon in the sky, enabling a solar eclipse unlike any that can be seen on Earth. As they would for a typical solar eclipse, the astronauts had to don darkened eclipse glasses to look at the sun, and they made observations of its outermost layer, the corona. Their unique vantage point, unencumbered by the distortion of the atmosphere, could allow them to catch details that would be tough to spot from the ground.

Of course, they caught many such details on the surface of the moon itself. Throughout the flight, they emphasised the surprising diversity of colours on the lunar surface: while much of it is grey, as it appears from Earth, there are areas that look green, brown and even orange up close due to chemical variations in the rocks and dust. “It’s amazing how quickly it changes as we speed around the far side of the moon,” said Hansen.

While circling the moon, the crew were able to look at areas that have never been directly seen by human eyes before. They spent much of their time observing the terminator, the line between day and night, where prominent shadows bring the terrain into stark relief. “There is just so much magic in the terminator – the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes [where] you’d fall straight to the centre of the moon if you stepped in some of those, it’s just so visually captivating,” said Glover.

Free newsletter

Sign up to Launchpad

Sign up to newsletter

While looking at the topography up close, the astronauts also expressed that they were struck by imagining what it would be like to walk across the lunar surface. “The truth is, the moon really is its own body in the universe – it’s not just a poster in the sky that goes by, it is a real place,” said Koch.

At its closest, the capsule was about 6545 kilometres from the lunar surface. This is the nearest that humans will get to the moon until the Artemis IV mission, planned for 2028, which will include a landing.

Now that Orion has circled the moon, its journey back to Earth begins. The astronauts will arrive home on 10 April, splashing down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Then, the work of analysing all of their notes, photographs and scientific observations will begin, in preparation for the rest of the Artemis programme to continue apace.

The history and future of space exploration: US

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the heart of the US’s space and astronomy landmarks, designed for curious minds and lifelong learners.

Read more