Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
NASA-UAP-D010 · NASA · May 15, 1963 · audio · 3:00 · Release 2
What the war.gov catalog says
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.
Transcript
00:00static
commanderUh, and now at 1 hour, at this time, I now have 1 hour and 21 minutes, and I am observing giant fireflies drifting away from me.
commanderI can observe them, uh, freely departing from the spacecraft and drifting out to the rear. And can see some of them considerable distance out to the rear.
00:33silence 00:33-00:45
commanderSun is coming up behind me, I'm beginning to get the glow on the clouds.
00:52silence 00:52-01:07
commanderFireflies appear to be white, very whitish, uh, with almost a green, like real fireflies.
01:19silence 01:19-01:42
commanderClouds on the Earth below are changing color, are getting quite light.
01:53silence 01:53-02:39
commander[cough] I am now on the day side, the sun is not yet quite up, and I am observing stars.
commanderThe Earth is light below me, sun is still behind me, the sky looks dark above me, and I can see stars very distinctly.
02:59static
The audio is a historical spaceflight recording with some background static.
Written by AI from the files. It can be wrong; check the originals.