NASA-UAP-D011, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
Official description
During the final and longest flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 9 mission (MA-9) Faith 7 Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. describes the brilliant blue of sunrise beneath the haze layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. As he approaches sunrise, he describes small, luminous, brilliant white particles drifting away from the spacecraft. Cooper describes observing “fireflies” after deploying beacons, which are spherical mission-related equipment with xenon strobe lights.
✦ AI summary
This Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) air-to-ground audio excerpt begins with Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. narrating orbital sunrise — the brilliant blue band of light beneath the atmospheric haze layer as seen from orbit — and reporting small, luminous, brilliant-white particles drifting away from the spacecraft, forward of his position, as sunrise approaches. He confirms to CAPCOM (Hawaii) that he has not yet seen the deployed beacon, a spherical piece of equipment with xenon strobe lights, which relates to the mission's "fireflies" phenomenon. The exchange continues with routine systems chatter: telemetry status, TV camera control being switched off, DC current/main bus readings, a check on whether Cooper has eaten, and fuel consumption comparisons between automatic and manual control, plus a view of Florida passing below. The recording's final several minutes are severely degraded and could not be reliably transcribed.
Generated with AI from the official file — may contain errors.
▸Transcript
[00:00] Cooper: And I'm beginning to get the brilliant blue of sunrise in the east — a bright blue band underneath all this haze layer. I can see the haze layer, and the bright band of light demarcation coming underneath it. Quite distinctive — it has a faint edge to it. It's where there are clouds, apparently. [00:42] CAPCOM (Hawaii): Roger, Faith 7, reading you loud and clear. [01:02] Cooper: Roger, understand. [unintelligible] 180 degrees, approaching sunrise. [01:10] CAPCOM: Roger. [01:10] Cooper: These small luminescent particles drift away from me, small and forward. In this light they appear brilliant white, without [color] in them — they appear brilliant. [01:42] CAPCOM: Roger, you haven't seen the beacon at this time? [Cooper:] Negative, I still haven't seen the beacon at this time. [02:02] CAPCOM: Roger, understand. Telemetry looks real good on the ground. [02:22] Cooper: Roger. [CAPCOM:] Confirm TV control — switch it to off. [Cooper:] Roger, telemetry looks good on the ground. TV control is off. [02:51] CAPCOM: We have a slight decrease in the fuel pool length on the DC current — would you go to the right? [03:10] Cooper: Roger, DC current. Roger, main bus is 24, isolated 28 and a half. [03:31] CAPCOM: Roger. Roger, good — oh good, I was worried. Did you have anything to eat? [Cooper:] Negative, not yet. I'm planning to shortly here, though. [03:51] CAPCOM: All right, for your information, systems life computations on fuel gave you 88 auto, 98 manual, which is somewhat better than what you're getting on board. [04:10] Cooper: Roger, on board I'm indicating 96 and 102. Oh boy, what a beautiful shot over there. [04:36] CAPCOM: Roger. [Cooper:] Roger, the whole state is clear, I can see just about all of it — it's been a beautiful view coming over Florida. [05:10] [unintelligible — remainder of recording, approx. 05:10 to 08:08, consists of repetitive, garbled audio ("Roger" repeated) that could not be reliably transcribed, likely a transcription artifact from degraded audio]
Generated with AI from the official file — may contain errors.
Source: U.S. Department of War / AARO — public domain · war.gov/ufo
Entities in this document
Connected cases
NASA-UAP-D010, Mercury Atlas 9 Audio Excerpt, May 15, 1963
NASA-UAP-D012, Mercury Atlas 8 Audio Excerpt, October 3, 1962
NASA-UAP-D015, Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963
NASA-UAP-D018, Gemini 4 Experiment Debriefing, 1967
NASA-UAP-D019, Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part I, 1965
