Overview

• On July 3 over Mexico and the United States, NASA astronaut Nichole “Vapor” Ayers captured a transient luminous event known as a sprite from the International Space Station.
• The striking image has gone viral and is being merged with the Spritacular project’s citizen-science submissions to expand the global sprite dataset.
• Sprites are brief, millisecond-long red flashes at about 80 km altitude triggered by intense electrical activity in thunderstorms.
• At roughly 250 miles above Earth, the ISS provides an unobstructed vantage that overcomes ground-based limitations for photographing these fleeting phenomena.
• Researchers will combine astronaut imagery with more than 360 volunteer observations to improve models of sprite frequency, morphology and their link to storm dynamics.