Overview

• On July 3 NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers photographed a red-hued sprite from the ISS while passing over Mexico and the southwestern United States, sharing the shot on X with the caption “Just. Wow.”
• The image has drawn over two million views and supplied researchers with unprecedented space-based measurements of sprite altitude, duration and morphology.
• Sprites are brief red electrical discharges in the mesosphere triggered by positive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and lasting only a fraction of a second.
• This orbital observation builds on pilot reports dating to the 1950s, the first authenticated sprite photograph in 1989 and recent ground-based captures of green “mesospheric ghosts.”
• Ayers remains aboard the SpaceX Crew-10 mission through at least August, offering ongoing opportunities to document transient luminous events from space.