DISCLOSURE / FILECooper Reports Glenn Fireflies Mercury Atlas 9 1963
NASA-UAP-D010, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
A 1963 audio excerpt from Mercury-Atlas 9 in which astronaut Gordon Cooper verbally reports the 'fireflies' phenomenon previously noted by John Glenn, with NASA later attributing it to frozen condensation reflecting sunlight.
Brief
Approximately one hour and 41 minutes into Faith 7 — the final and longest flight of Project Mercury — pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. reports seeing 'John's fireflies,' invoking John Glenn's term from Mercury-Atlas 6. The source is an audio excerpt; no written page text is available. NASA's official determination attributes the white, green-hued objects to sunlight reflecting off frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body. The excerpt was released by the Department of War on May 22, 2026, under identifier NASA-UAP-D010, placing this 63-year-old astronaut observation formally within the UAP disclosure corpus.
Metadata
- Agency
- NASA
- Release
- 5/22/26
- Incident
- 5/15/63
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
- Type
- AUDIO • .aud
- Length
- 3:01
- Programs
- Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 9 (MA-9, Faith 7), Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6, Friendship 7)
- Tags
- luminous objects, fireflies, green-hued, low Earth orbit, frozen condensation, 1963, Project Mercury, Faith 7, MA-9
Key points
- The observation occurs approximately 1 hour and 41 minutes into the MA-9 Faith 7 mission on May 15, 1963, in low Earth orbit.
- Cooper explicitly names the phenomenon 'John's fireflies,' cross-referencing John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 observation and establishing cross-mission continuity.
- NASA later determined the fireflies are attributable to frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body, not an unidentified phenomenon.
- The objects' distinctive white, green-hued appearance is explained by sunlight reflecting off the frozen condensation.
- Faith 7 was the final and longest Project Mercury flight, making Cooper's report the capstone observation of the fireflies phenomenon within the program.
- The source is audio-only — no extractable page text exists, and no verbatim quotes can be verified against a written transcript in this release.
Most interesting
- John Glenn coined 'fireflies' during Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7, February 1962); Cooper's independent report 15 months later on the program's final flight confirmed the phenomenon was consistent across at least two missions and two spacecraft.
- NASA's condensation explanation was determined after the mission — the phrase 'NASA later determined' in the release description implies no real-time institutional answer was available when Cooper made the call.
- The Department of War's classification of this audio clip under a UAP disclosure tranche is the first time this Glenn-era astronaut observation has been formally catalogued under that designation.
- The green hue noted in NASA's explanation is consistent with spectral output of sunlight on ice-crystal particulates, a mundane but visually striking optical effect at orbital altitudes.