Strangest fact
The crew asked mission control where their rocket stage was, were told it was 6,000 miles away, and still kept seeing something close by that changed shape as it tumbled. That is exactly the kind of moment that sounds like a UFO, and the crew deliberately kept it off the open radio.
During the flight to the Moon in July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins saw a brighter object among the usual flakes and droplets near the spacecraft. NASA's technical crew debriefing of July 31, 1969 records the discussion. Aldrin: We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6000 miles away.
Looking through a monocular, it seemed to have a bit of an L shape to it.
Armstrong: Like an open suitcase.
Armstrong added that it was right at the limit of the resolution of the eye,
so neither its size nor its distance could be judged.
Through the sextant, out of focus, the object looked like a hollow cylinder, and then like an open-book shape.
Collins called it "really weird" and said the crew had no firm conclusion about what it was. In the same debriefing Aldrin described tiny flashes of light he saw inside the darkened cabin while trying to sleep, and guessed they were some kind of particle passing through the spacecraft.
In 2005 a Science Channel documentary included an interview in which Aldrin described seeing an object that seemed to follow them. NASA senior scientist David Morrison wrote in Skeptical Inquirer in 2009 that he called Aldrin, who said his remarks had been taken out of context to reverse his meaning.
According to Morrison, Aldrin explained that the crew concluded they were seeing one of the panels that had separated from the rocket's upper stage, too small to be tracked from Earth, and that this explanation was cut from the broadcast. Aldrin also said the crew avoided discussing it on the open radio because they feared being misunderstood.