Transcript of a portion of the one hour documentary, Apollo 11 The Untold Story, broadcast on 2006-07-24T21:00+0100 and repeated 2006-07-27T23:00+0100 by UK Channel 5 Television.
It seems a number of NASA scientists are UFO true believers. The interview, as aired, didn't reveal what Buzz Aldrin believes about the nature of the UFO or UFOlogy in general. Subsequent interviews suggest Buzz does not believe it was an alien craft, rather that it was discarded panels from the Apollo-Saturn launch vehicle.
Narrator: "… three days and 200,000 miles into the flight, Mission Control did miss the significance of a cryptic message from the Astronauts."
Apollo 11: "Do you have any idea where the, err, S-IVB is with respect to us?" [radio transmission]
Mission Control: "Standby." [radio transmission]
Narrator: "The crew required information on the current position of the S-IVB, the final stage of the rocket which had been jettisoned away two days earlier. This short message hid an extraordinary turn of events, Apollo 11 wasn't alone in space."
Buzz Aldrin: "There was something out there that, um, was close enough to be observed, and err, what could it be?"
Narrator: "Travelling alongside Apollo 11 was a mysterious object, like this one filmed on a later mission [footage of indistinct, green-glowing object]. If the object wasn't part of Apollo's rocket, it could be only one thing - a UFO."
Buzz Aldrin: "Mike [Collins] decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when, when, it was in one position it had a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of `L' shaped. That didn't tell us very much."
Dr Baker: "NASA knew very little about, um, the object reported by the Apollo 11 crew. It was obviously an Unidentified Flying Object, but such objects were not uncommon and the history of even Earth Orbit spaceflights, going back over the previous years, indicated that several crews saw objects."
Narrator: "Despite having a clear view of the UFO, the crew were wary of reporting it to Mission Control."
Buzz Aldrin: "Now obviously the three of us were not going to, err, blurt out, `Hey Houston we've got something moving alongside of us and, err, we don't know what is, you know, can you tell us what it is.' We weren't about to do that, err, because we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and, err, who knows what somebody would have demanded that we, err, turn back because of aliens or whatever the reason is. So we didn't do that but we did, err, decide we just cautiously ask, err, Houston where how far away was the S-IVB."
Narrator: "Unaware of the drama unfolding in space, Mission Control radioed the position back to Apollo 11."
Mission Control: "Apollo 11, Houston. The S-IVB is about 6,000 nautical miles from you now, over." [radio transmission]
Buzz Aldrin: "And a few moments later, why they came back and said something like it was 6,000 miles away because of the manoeuvre so we really didn't think we were looking at something that far way, so we decided that after a while watching it, err, we, was time to go to sleep and not to talk about it anymore until we came back and debriefing."
Narrator: "To this day, whatever it was the crew saw has never been positively identified, or officially acknowledged."
Dr Baker: "The possibility that you might encounter aliens in space, err, has to be considered in a very sensible and positive and realistic way, umm, there were alot of people within the programme who went off later and became convinced that UFOs existed, and that led to some concern on NASA's part where they got the agreement of the crew never to publicly talk about these things for fear of ridicule."
Narrator: "After this close encounter, the crew hoped for a good night's sleep …"
