© Unknown
The pictures have conjured up the accusations by the UFO fans that the agency has been hiding encounters with alien life for decades.
The allegations raised in pitch as the recently-posted footages showed, what appeared to be, an 'alien craft' shifting its shape while on the move and lights that apparently changed direction.
Astronauts, however, have dismissed the claims as interpretations by people who had seen 'unexplained things', FOXNews reported on Wednesday.
"The lights moving by in the background are either isolated lights on the ground or stars, I think likely the latter," said Mario Runco, an astronaut who had accompanied one of the 1996 probes.
"A few ice crystals or flakes of thruster residue in the near field are floating by, get hit by a thruster exhaust plume and zip out of the scene," said Thomas Jones, a former shuttle mission specialist.
They said people of their line of work were quite interested in the subject themselves and would not refuse to publicize information on intelligent extraterrestrial life should they spot one.
"If I thought it was an intelligent craft, I'd be the first one to speak up.... I'd want the credit," Runco added.
I'm a pro photographer and I know that to even consider that it may be a close up object is just not feasible. Whatever the object is, it's pretty far away, almost inline with the moon as opposed to being some sort of near debris. If it was near, you would see blur, aka bokeh, not a defined point of focus as is clearly visible. And that's regardless of the smallest aperture one could obtain.