Mercury-Redstone 4, July 21, 1961 — NASA Audio
During the recovery of the fourth launch and second crewed spaceflight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) Liberty Bell 7, the recovery team discusses a dye pack in the water that did not activate.
Incident Overview
On July 21, 1961, in North Atlantic Ocean, NASA preserved a mission audio recording that was declassified and published on May 22, 2026 as part of the second tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
What the government released
During the recovery of the fourth launch and second crewed spaceflight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) Liberty Bell 7, the recovery team discusses a dye pack in the water that did not activate.
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.