Mercury Atlas 7, May 24, 1962
An audio record of Scott Carpenter narrating something unexpected outside his capsule during the second American orbital mission — white, reflective particles moving in patterns he couldn't immediately explain, some appearing to outpace the spacecraft itself. The observation echoes John Glenn's famous "fireflies" reported just three months earlier on Friendship 7, suggesting whatever Carpenter saw wasn't a one-off quirk. Whether mundane (ice crystals, spacecraft outgassing) or not, having two astronauts independently describe similar anomalies in consecutive missions makes this worth hearing in Carpenter's own words.
During the fourth crewed spaceflight and second orbital flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 7 (MA-7), Aurora 7 pilot Scott Carpenter describes white particles in view that appear to move at “random” and “look exactly like snowflakes.” He describes these phenomena as reflective, and that some seemed to move faster than the Aurora 7 spacecraft.