THE SOURCE
(Unchanged: NASA-UAP-D008 through NASA-UAP-D014, seven audio excerpts, PURSUE Release 02, published at war.gov/ufo on 22 May 2026; Project Mercury flights 1961 to 1963 and Apollo flights 1969 to 1972.)
Why this one is worth your time
Most of this archive is paperwork. These seven files are voices: Mercury and Apollo astronauts describing lights they could not immediately name, in their own cadence, with the crackle of the channel behind them. And NASA’s findings travelled into the release with them, so the question and the answer sit in the same file group. Few places in either release put an observation and its investigation this close together, and you can listen to the originals.
What the tapes say
The seven excerpts. From Project Mercury: Scott Carpenter on Mercury-Atlas 7 in 1962, Wally Schirra on Mercury-Atlas 8 in 1962, and Gordon Cooper on Mercury-Atlas 9 in 1963, each describing small luminous white particles drifting near the capsule, with Cooper reaching for John Glenn’s term, “fireflies”. From Apollo: the Apollo 12 crew in 1969 on light flashes seen while trying to sleep, and the Apollo 17 crew in 1972 on bright angular particles near the spacecraft and the spent rocket stage. The seventh, from Mercury-Redstone 4 in 1961, is a recovery-team discussion of a dye marker pack that failed to activate in the water.
The fireflies. On the first American orbital flight in 1962, John Glenn described a cloud of small luminous particles around his capsule, and the name he gave them stuck. These excerpts show it being reused: Cooper, a year later, refers directly to “John’s fireflies”, and Carpenter and Schirra describe the same kind of thing in their own words, white particles, “lathe shavings”, objects that “look exactly like snowflakes”. NASA’s finding, stated in these files: frozen condensation, tiny flakes of ice shed by the spacecraft, glinting in sunlight against the black of space and drifting with the capsule. The excerpts also carry the crews’ own detail: Carpenter noting some particles seemed to move faster than the spacecraft, Cooper noting some appeared after he deployed equipment.
The Apollo 12 light flashes. Commander Conrad and his crew describe flashes or streaks of light in the dark while trying to sleep, seen, the exchange implies, even with eyes shut. The same recording holds the NASA medical team considering whether this matched what Buzz Aldrin had reported on Apollo 11, and whether the cause was cosmic rays affecting the retina. The effect was later named and studied formally: cosmic-ray visual phenomena, high-energy particles passing through the eye or the visual system and registering as flashes, reported by essentially every crew that has flown beyond low orbit. In this file, the observation and the hypothesis sit on the same tape; the formal studies came on later missions.
The Apollo 17 particles, and the dye pack. Cernan, Schmitt and Evans describe bright angular “particles” or “fragments” drifting near their spacecraft and near the separated Saturn S-IVB stage. The crew speculate on the recording itself: paint chips or ice chips, twinkling, drifting away from the discarded stage. The seventh file barely belongs to the topic at all: a recovery-team conversation about a dye marker that failed to activate after splashdown. Its presence is a measure of how widely the net was cast when AARO gathered “potentially UAP-related” material; not everything in the collection is a sighting.
What the tapes do not say
One item in the group carries no stated explanation: a brief burst of light Schirra reported, which he himself waved toward a sunset effect, and which, on the released record, nobody pursued further. That is the file group’s single open thread, exactly as wide as those two sentences.
The excerpts are excerpts. Whatever was said outside them is not part of this record. And the tapes carry the crews’ descriptions and NASA’s stated findings; the underlying investigation data sits behind those findings, referenced rather than reproduced here.
From the record
“John’s fireflies.” Gordon Cooper, Mercury-Atlas 9, 1963
“Look exactly like snowflakes.” Mercury crew description of the particles, as excerpted in the release
Listen for yourself
The seven excerpts, NASA-UAP-D008 through D014, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 02, audio with the original mission timestamps.
Listen to the tapes. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
(Unchanged from deployed: D008 to D014; PURSUE at war.gov/ufo; AARO UAP Records; fireflies and cosmic-ray visual phenomena background, NASA and standard references; Release 01 Briefing 1.)