Overview
- On July 3, 2025, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers photographed a red sprite from the International Space Station while flying over Mexico and the United States.
- Sprites are brief Transient Luminous Events triggered by positive cloud-to-ground lightning that extend electric fields into the mesosphere and last only fractions of a second.
- Ayers shared the image on X with the caption “Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite,” and it quickly went viral.
- This latest capture builds on June 2024 ISS observations and offers scientists a clear, space-based view for studying sprite formation, characteristics and their interactions with thunderstorms.
- Ayers is serving as pilot on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission aboard the ISS through at least August 2025 while conducting a range of atmospheric and physiological experiments.