Michael Collins was the loneliest astronaut of all time when, in 1969, he orbited the Moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the desolate satellite.

Alone in the Apollo 11 Command Module, he had plenty of time to think about life in outer space.

And the veteran astronaut has decided firmly in favour of extraterrestrials.

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In an online chat this week, marking the 50th anniversary of the first Moon mission, Twitter users asked Michael about the food the astronauts ate, the music they listened to, and the technical side of flying the Moon lander.

But one curious questioner asked “Do you believe in life outside Earth?”

And Michael simply replied “Yes.”

Michael has been answering questions on Twitter

UFO enthusiasts went wild over a seemingly innocuous exchange between the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control in 1969.

On the third day of the mission, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong spotted an object moving on a roughly parallel course them as they zoomed towards the Moon.

The crew’s best guess was that the mysterious object was the third stage of the enormous Saturn-V rockets that had launched them into space.

Apollo 11 was the first mission to the Moon

Armstrong radioed Mission Control in Houston and asked “Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with respect to us?.”

A few minutes later, mission controllers replied. “The S-IVB is about 6,000 nautical miles from you now. Over.”

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That satisfied Armstrong, who said 12 seconds later: “Okay. Thank you.”

The Apollo 11 crew, then and now

But it didn’t satisfy conspiracy theorists, who were convinced that what the three pioneers had seen was nothing less than an alien spacecraft shadowing them as they made their groundbreaking journey.

Aldrin later released a statement denying that the Apollo 11 crew had seen a UFO, but this simple remark from his crewmate Collins is sure to excite the alien-hunters all over again.