Official · Document · NASA
NASA Investigated Lights Seen by Two Astronauts in Space
John Glenn and Walter Schirra reported seeing lights during spaceflight. NASA interviewed them to find out what they saw.
In brief
John Glenn and Walter Schirra reported luminous phenomena during spaceflights. NASA interviewed them, but the summary does not specify what they saw or what caused the lights.
Summary
A compiled NASA file of scientific debriefing transcripts, memoranda, correspondence and analysis from Project Mercury (1962-1963) concerning visual phenomena reported by astronauts. It centers on the luminous 'firefly'/'snowflake' particles seen by John Glenn (MA-6) and Scott Carpenter (MA-7) at sunrise, and on a luminous band/airglow layer seen above the horizon, with debriefings also covering Walter Schirra (MA-8) and Gordon Cooper (MA-9). Internal memos and a Los Alamos letter document NASA's scientific effort to characterize the particles and the airglow layer; the documents conclude the particles originated from the spacecraft itself (Carpenter demonstrated this by striking the capsule wall to release them), not from extraterrestrial sources.
Incidents in the document
- 1962-02-20 · Page 20
During MA-6, at first sunrise on each of three orbits, John Glenn observed thousands of small luminous particles outside the capsule window, firefly-like, steady, yellow-green/green-yellow in color, roughly 6-10 feet apart and from very small up to about 3/8-1/2 inch, drifting at an estimated 3-5 mph differential. He initially wondered if they were Air Force chaff/needles or frozen water from the capsule. They appeared only at the first light of sunrise and faded as the sun rose.