NASA‘s most famous astronauts secretly claimed that they encountered an alien presence on the moon and were told to keep it quiet for decades.
Physicist Maaneli Derakhshani told the American Alchemy podcast that multiple Apollo missions allegedly captured photos of UFOs around the moon during the 1960s and 1970s, only to have those images altered before the public saw them.
Derakhshani, who researches lunar and Martian surface anomalies, detailed instances where famous NASA photos taken by astronauts on the surface of the moon had been clearly altered when compared to public copies of the same images.
The scientist said: ‘One scan from the Lunar and Planetary Institute – this is an archive that NASA has managed since the 1970s – and it’s an Apollo 14 photograph with Ed Mitchell standing on the lunar surface.’
‘You see his long shadow stretched out and… essentially the lunar sky is completely black in this version. You zoom in everywhere, it’s completely black,’ Derakhshani revealed.
‘However, if you look at the “March to the moon” version of that same frame, which is managed by Johnson Space Center and Arizona State University, there is a blue orb in the lunar sky very clearly. It’s very obvious above Mitchell.’
Derakhshani and podcast host Jesse Michels also noted that several astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon, have reportedly claimed they received telepathic messages from extraterrestrials warning them not to return.
The bombshell whistleblower stories come as NASA prepares to land on the lunar surface by 2028 – ending a nearly six-decade absence which has sparked unproven conspiracy theories as to why the US never returned to the moon.
Physicist Maaneli Derakhshani claimed on the American Alchemy podcast that NASA photos from the moon have been altered to erase signs of UFOs
Physicist Maaneli Derakhshani (left) and American Alchemy host Jesse Michels (right) discussed the many claims of an alien cover-up involving NASA astronauts and the moon
During the final moon mission, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt took many photos while visiting the lunar surface in 1972.
However, Derakhshani revealed on the podcast that one famous frame showed three solid blue lights in the black sky above a lunar hill. When brightened, the area between the lights gets brighter, suggesting they might be attached to a larger object.
NASA’s own description of this image during the first batch of declassified UFO files released in May noted that a ‘special investigation’ had been opened because experts examining it believed the lights may be part of a large physical object in space.
The scientist noted that other photos from the same mission captured blue metallic-looking streaks in space, but when zoomed in and brightened, the streaks resembled insectoid-like objects with faint trails from an alleged engine.
Skeptics, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, have claimed that the images were only displaying cosmic rays, but Derakhshani called the odds of this statistically improbable, as the objects were solid round lights – not gaseous streaks or lens flares.
Despite releasing tranches of photos and hours of audio recordings from the Apollo moon missions as part of the Trump Administration’s UFO disclosure campaign, NASA and the Pentagon continue to deny that proof of alien life has been found.
Derakhshani added that the altered pictures and other sightings were not definitive proof of aliens, but said the patterns are hard to explain as natural geology, camera glitches or ordinary space debris.
However, the strongest evidence of a NASA cover-up may come from the alleged confession of an actual NASA astronaut who claimed he was ordered to destroy potential proof of UFO sightings near the moon.
This archival photograph depicts the lunar surface as viewed from the landing site of Apollo 12. This image features a highlighted area of interest slightly to the right of the vertical axis of the frame, above the horizon, in which unidentified phenomena are visible
This archival photograph depicts the lunar surface as viewed from the landing site of Apollo 12. This image features highlighted areas above the horizon in which unidentified phenomena are visible
‘There’s also Ken Johnston Sr, who was one of the pilots who trained the NASA astronauts and was a backup astronaut for the Apollo missions if I remember correctly,’ Derakhshani said in the July 20 episode on YouTube.
‘He says he was told to destroy a bunch of first-generation or early-generation Apollo negatives because they had some anomalies on them and they’re not supposed to be there, and they don’t want to release them publicly and he actually saved some of them and put some of his copies online.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to NASA for comment.
Michels then brought up the alleged confessions of astronauts Cernan and Armstrong, who both reportedly mentioned having similar experiences during their lunar flights involving a warning received from extraterrestrials.
‘There are all these apocryphal stories of Neil Armstrong telling similar stories in Washington, DC, saying, “We were told not to come back to the moon,”‘ the host said.
Michels referenced a previous interview with Steve Colbern, a lab analyst who participated in surgeries to remove alleged alien implants from people, who also claimed Armstrong was overheard at a party for high-level political guests repeating this warning.
Meanwhile, Cernan reportedly told his friend and Japanese NASA museum curator Josen Takano that during the trip to the moon, he received some type of telepathic message, saying: ‘We don’t really want you here.’
The next mission scheduled to circle the moon, Artemis III, is expected to take place at some point in 2027. The following mission, a year later, Artemis IV, is expected to be the first lunar landing since the Apollo program.
