Photo credit: Nichole “Vapor” Ayers
On July 3, 2025, while zooming over Mexico and the southern U.S. aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Nichole “Vapor” Ayers snapped a photo of a rare lightning sprite—a dazzling red burst that looks like a cosmic jellyfish shooting up from a thunderstorm.
Called Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), these flashes spark in the mesosphere, 30 to 50 miles above the ground, way higher than regular lightning that zaps downward. Ayers’ photo captures the sprites’ glowing red burst, complete with tendrils. Kicked off by a fierce bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning, these flashes vanish in a split second, leaving ground-based stargazers no chance. But from the ISS, floating above the storm clouds, Ayers had the perfect front-row seat.
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Sprites, first snapped in 1989 despite pilot sightings going back to the 1950s, are still a bit of a mystery. Why do some lightning strikes set off these skyward bursts while others don’t? Scientists are piecing it together with shots like Ayers’. NASA’s “Spritacular” citizen science project rallies folks to track TLEs, and ISS photos like hers offer a killer top-down view. Ayers said that these orbital glimpses help researchers figure out how sprites form and connect to the storms below.
Ayers, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and part of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission, isn’t just up there snapping pics. Launched to the ISS on March 14, 2025, she’s tackling experiments from how materials burn in space to how our bodies handle the cosmic life. It’s a reminder that the ISS, circling Earth every 90 minutes, is a floating lookout for stuff too quick or faint for ground cameras.
For scientists, this photo is pure gold. Sprites, along with cousins like blue jets and ELVES, hint at wild stuff happening in Earth’s upper atmosphere. They’re not just cool lights—they’re keys to how thunderstorms mess with the mesosphere and beyond. While sprites don’t seem to bother planes, their electromagnetic pulses could, in theory, mess with high-flying tech.
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