DISCLOSURE / FILESchirra Reports Lathe-Shaving Particles and Window Flash
NASA-UAP-D012, Mercury Atlas 8 Audio Excerpt, October 3, 1962
A 1962 in-mission audio excerpt in which Mercury Atlas 8 pilot Wally Schirra verbally reports unidentified white objects drifting from his capsule and an unexplained burst of light in his window, both logged in real time during Low Earth Orbit.
Brief
During the October 3, 1962 Mercury Atlas 8 mission, Sigma 7 pilot Walter M. Schirra Jr. reported small white objects originating from the capsule and drifting away, describing them alternately as 'particles' and 'lathe shavings.' He also reported a burst of light appearing in his window, the source of which he could not identify at the moment of observation. Schirra proposed that the light event corresponded with the sun passing below the horizon at sunset. Released under the May 2026 Department of War UAP disclosure, the audio places his observations into the formal UAP record as a contemporaneous, in-mission primary source rather than post-flight recall.
Metadata
- Agency
- NASA
- Release
- 5/22/26
- Incident
- 10/3/62
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
- Type
- AUDIO • .aud
- Length
- 3:31
- Programs
- Mercury Atlas 8, Sigma 7
- Tags
- white drifting particles, burst of light, Low Earth Orbit, 1962, Mercury Atlas 8, Sigma 7, audio excerpt
Key points
- Schirra observed small white objects drifting away from the Sigma 7 capsule during active orbital flight and logged the observation verbally in real time.
- He applied two separate candidate descriptions to the objects — 'particles' and 'lathe shavings' — indicating an active attempt to match what he saw against known capsule materials.
- A burst of light appeared in Schirra's window and its source could not be identified by the pilot at the time of the event.
- Schirra advanced a solar-transit hypothesis, speculating that the light burst coincided with the moment the sun passed below the horizon during sunset.
- The DoW included this excerpt in the UAP disclosure despite Schirra offering prosaic candidate explanations, suggesting the review criteria did not require a phenomenon to remain unexplained by the witness to qualify for the record.
- The incident date of October 3, 1962 predates formal UAP reporting frameworks, making the astronaut's contemporaneous verbal log the sole primary evidentiary layer.
Most interesting
- The white drifting objects Schirra described are consistent with a class of observation first logged by John Glenn on Friendship 7 in February 1962 — luminous particles later attributed to ice crystals venting from the capsule's hydrogen peroxide attitude-control thrusters. Schirra's independent 'lathe shavings' framing parallels Glenn's 'fireflies' description without copying it.
- Mercury Atlas 8 completed six Earth orbits in approximately nine hours and thirteen minutes, making it the longest American orbital spaceflight to that date.
- Schirra is the only astronaut to have flown in all three of NASA's first human spaceflight programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
- The audio excerpt was produced during flight, not reconstructed afterward — a distinction that gives it higher evidentiary weight than post-mission debriefs, where memory consolidation and social framing can alter accounts.
- The burst-of-light observation remains categorically distinct from the drifting-particle observation in the description: the particles had a candidate mechanical origin (the capsule itself), while the light source was unresolved by the witness.