Ever since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon in 1969, more than 290 people have visited NASA’s International Space Center. After all, seeing Earth from space is something that everybody wishes for, but few get to experience.
Long before they made the landing on the moon, an astronaut named John Glenn took a flight into space in his Friendship 7 and witnessed something that he had never seen before in his life.
Glenn passed away at the age of 95 in 2016, but he was one of NASA’s original seven Mercury astronauts. His visit to space on February 20, 1962, proved that America was a tough competitor to the Soviet Union in terms of space experience.
Glenn’s mission during that time was to take rounds of the Earth before he could come back, and in the same mission, he saw something that was special, unlike anything else.
During his first round, Glenn reported to NASA that he could see something shiny, almost like fireflies, like glowing objects, when he looked outside his window.
He said that the tiny particles that were shining too brightly were all around his spaceship. Glenn even compared the particles to fireflies and stars.
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The particles were not only moving around his window, but every time he looked down, he could see them. Glenn said, “They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window, and they’re all brilliantly lighted,” as reported by IFL Science.
He also mentioned that they were not very far, only 7–8 feet away from him. Naturally, NASA thought that those particles could cause harm to the spaceship, but Glenn confirmed that he felt no effect on the capsule.
Glenn further added that their speed of movement was very slow, and that they were moving only 3 or 4 miles in 60 minutes, almost the same speed as the spaceship, but slightly less.
The astronaut said that those particles swirled around his spaceship, but the moment he looked, they went away. He also shared that there were thousands of them.
Glenn further weighed in on the timing of when these firefly-like particles appeared. He said that they were visible after sunset, and when the sun shone again, the objects started to disappear.
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After sunrise, the particles reportedly went away from his capsule at a speed of 3 to 5 miles per hour. John Glenn said that he could still see a few of them when the sun was 20° above the horizon.
As NASA kept discovering new things, it later discovered that those tiny particles that appeared to be fireflies were, in reality, tiny ice particles traveling next to the spaceship, and when the sun shone, they disappeared.
After John Glenn, other astronauts witnessed the exact same vision; however, Glenn was the first ever to see it and had a great story to tell the world.
