[chris]

These two audio excerpts were recorded during Mercury-Atlas 9, the Faith 7 flight, the final and longest flight of Project Mercury. Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. describes the brilliant blue of sunrise beneath the haze layer of Earth's atmosphere, and small, luminous white particles drifting away from the spacecraft.

Cooper also describes fireflies, using John Glenn's term from Mercury-Atlas 6, including after deploying beacons, spherical mission-related equipment with xenon strobe lights. NASA later determined the fireflies were frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body, with their white, green-hued appearance caused by sunlight reflecting off the frozen condensation.

From part 1, at 0:00:

Uh. And now at one hour at this time. I now have 1 hour and 21 minutes. And I am observing John's fireflies. away from me. I can observe them, uh. to be departing from the spacecraft. Drifting out to the rear. I can see some of them. A considerable distance out to the rear. The sun is coming up behind me. I'm beginning to get the glow on the clouds. Fireflies appear to be white. Very whitish, uh, with almost a green like rail fireflies.

From part 2, at 1:07:

Roger, I'm just a small end forward, 180 degrees, yaw approaching, uh, sunrise over. Roger These small luminescent particles drift away from you slowly and forward. In this light, they appear, uh, brilliant white without green at all in them.

Declassified by the Department of War under the PURSUE UAP records release (tranche of 5/22/26).
Agency: NASA
Incident: 5/15/63, Low Earth Orbit
Document ID: NASA-UAP-D010-set
Recording length: 11 minutes 15 seconds across 2 files.
Photograph: NASA, COOPER - PRELAUNCH (MA-9), 1963-04-23 (NASA ID s63-07521).