Apollo 12 Medical Debriefing - Tape 12, 1969
An audio recording from 1969 captures Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean describing streaks and flashes of light they witnessed in the darkness of deep space during Apollo 12. NASA's medical team worked to determine whether the same phenomenon Buzz Aldrin reported on Apollo 11 — suspected cosmic ray interactions with the retina — was occurring again, ultimately concluding the effects were neurological rather than external. It's a rare firsthand account of human sensory experience at the edge of known physics, and a reminder that some of the most genuinely strange things astronauts encountered had mundane-but-fascinating explanations.
During a medical debriefing of the crew of the Apollo 12 mission, Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard “Dick” F. Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean describe their observations of instances of light flashes or “streaks of lights.” The astronauts each reported that these experiences occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep. The NASA medical team considered whether similar phenomena reported by Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin had been attributable to exposure of the retina by cosmic rays. NASA later determined that the phenomena reported by the Apollo 12 flight crew were internal to the astronauts’ vision rather than external light sources.