NASA-UAP-D011 is a NASA audio record released in PURSUE Release 02 on May 22, 2026. The contributing agency is NASA; the documented incident date is May 15, 1963, and the location is low Earth orbit during the Mercury-Atlas 9 (MA-9) mission.12 DVIDS hosts the matching public audio entry and a direct MP4 rendition of the clip.34
Mission Context
Mercury-Atlas 9 was the final and longest crewed flight of Project Mercury. Faith 7, piloted by L. Gordon Cooper Jr., flew on May 15, 1963. The audio excerpt captures Cooper's real-time voice communications during the flight.
Sunrise and Drifting Particles
The PURSUE release note records that Cooper 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.
Fireflies After Beacon Deployment
Cooper also describes observing "fireflies" after deploying beacons. The release identifies those beacons as spherical, mission-related equipment fitted with xenon strobe lights.
What The Record Supports
NASA-UAP-D011 preserves Cooper's first-person descriptions of luminous particles near Faith 7 and of fireflies observed following the deployment of xenon-strobe beacons. The record ties the observations to known mission equipment and events. It does not establish the presence of an external, unidentified object; the phenomena described remain unresolved in the sense that they are not attributed to a specific mechanism in the release note, though the beacon-equipment context is identified.