Charles M. "Charlie" Duke Jr. (born 1935) is an American former Air Force officer and NASA astronaut who was the capsule communicator during the Apollo 11 landing and the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in April 1972, when he became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon. He enters UFO discussion not as a witness but through his religious conviction, voiced in interviews in recent years, that UFOs are demonic rather than visitors from other worlds.

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3, 1935, Duke graduated from the Naval Academy in 1957 and took his commission in the Air Force. He spent three years as a fighter-interceptor pilot in West Germany, earned a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and graduated from the Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1965, staying on as an instructor. NASA selected him in April 1966 in its fifth group of astronauts. As capsule communicator for the first landing in July 1969, he answered Neil Armstrong's touchdown call with a line that became famous: "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue."

On Apollo 16, which flew from April 16 to 27, 1972, Duke and commander John Young landed the lunar module Orion in the Descartes Highlands and spent more than 20 hours working outside it. He left a family photograph on the surface inscribed "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth." He retired from NASA in 1976, rose to brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve before retiring in 1986, and worked in business. In 1978 he became a born-again Christian, and he has been active in Christian ministry since.

Duke has said he never saw a UFO during his missions, only flashes of light of the kind NASA has linked to cosmic rays. His view of the phenomenon is theological. In an interview with Glenn Beck, clips of which circulated widely in early 2026, he said, "I don't believe in alien life," adding that God had shown him "that they're demonic." In a CBN News interview published on October 12, 2026, he said, "I felt like UFOs were demonic," and, invoking the biblical image of Satan disguised as an angel of light, "The Lord says what we're seeing is real, but the devil can appear as an angel of light, the Bible says." He has described being laughed at when he raised the idea at Rotary clubs, and on the Mission Chats podcast in September 2025 he described a breakfast conversation he took as an answer to a prayer for confirmation.

Duke also defended the reality of the Moon landings in 2026, telling Piers Morgan, in a clip shared on X, "You're willfully ignorant if you don't believe that we landed on the Moon!" The CBN interview was widely republished in October 2026, when he was 91. One of the few living people to have walked on the Moon, Duke continues to speak publicly about Apollo and his faith, and his remarks on UFOs rest on that faith rather than on anything he reported seeing in space.