Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963

Approximately one hour and 41 minutes into the final and longest flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 9 mission (MA-9) Faith 7 Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. notes that he sees “John’s fireflies,” referring to John Glenn’s term from the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. NASA later determined that the “fireflies” are attributable to frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body. The white, green-hued appearance of this phenomenon results from sunlight reflecting off frozen condensation.

Catalogue description by the publishing agency.

Record

NASA-UAP-D010

Release

Release 02 · May 22, 2026

Incident

1963-05-15 · Low Earth Orbit

Type

Audio

Verdict

not judged yet

Source

dvidshub.net ↗