DISCLOSURE / FILE
Cooper Reports Glenn Fireflies Mercury Atlas 9 1963
A NASA audio excerpt from the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) mission of May 15, 1963, in which pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. reports seeing 'John's fireflies' in low Earth orbit.
DISCLOSURE / FILE
A NASA audio excerpt from the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) mission of May 15, 1963, in which pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. reports seeing 'John's fireflies' in low Earth orbit.
NASA-UAP-D010, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
A NASA audio excerpt from the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) mission of May 15, 1963, in which pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. reports seeing 'John's fireflies' in low Earth orbit.
About one hour and 41 minutes into Mercury-Atlas 9, the final and longest flight of Project Mercury, Faith 7 pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. notes that he sees 'John's fireflies,' invoking John Glenn's term from the earlier Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. NASA later attributed the 'fireflies' to frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body, with the white, green-hued appearance produced by sunlight reflecting off that frozen condensation. The file is an image or external audio asset released by NASA on May 22, 2026; no transcript text was extracted. The document does not assert an anomalous origin for the phenomenon.