PURSUE archive · catalogue card
NASA-UAP-D010
Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
This card reproduces what the official catalogue publishes. Our own analysis (cross-checked sources, timeline and hypotheses) will come when its turn arrives in the weekly review.
- Agency
- NASA
- Incident date
- May 15, 1963As the catalogue writes it: “5/15/63”
- Place
- Off the globe: Low Earth orbitAs the catalogue writes it: “Low Earth Orbit”
- Published in PURSUE
- May 22, 2026
- Records
- 1 record · Audio
01 Official description
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.
02 Catalogue records · 1
NASA-UAP-D010 · Audio · NASA · May 22, 2026
Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
5/15/63 · Low Earth Orbit
DVIDS · broken link in the catalogue (checked Oct 5, 2026)
03 Related cases
Other catalogue cards from the same area or the same decade.
04 Sources
- [1]
Record · U.S. Department of War
Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE)
Card, descriptions and comments: PURSUE catalogue, U.S. Department of War. The files are not hosted here; they open on their official site.
Checked on Oct 4, 2026 · Open the original ↗
May contain errors by the AI and the editor · always check the official source.