Documents / Official release
This NASA file of astronaut scientific debriefing papers from 1962 collects internal Office of Space Sciences material on the science observations made on early Mercury flights. A February 1962 memo from Maurice Dubin asks for more detail on John Glenn's report of luminous particles and the atmospheric horizon layer. A draft memo concludes that the particles were tied to the spacecraft and were not extraterrestrial. The file also holds a Los Alamos letter that attributes the high haze layer to nitrogen peroxide, and notes on Carpenter's airglow observations.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 This file contains memoranda, correspondence, reports, and other materials relating to contemporary scientific interest in investigating the nature of luminous phenomena reported by astronauts John Glenn and Walter Schirra during spaceflight. This collection includes transcripts from NASA interviews and debriefings with both astronauts regarding those observations. It also contains details relating to scientific observations of atmospheric phenomena, including brief descriptions of luminous particles, experiences while aboard spacecraft, and circa 1955 theoretical analysis of meteoric particles entering the atmosphere. Pages 34-35, 55-56, 57-63, 64-113, and 122-127 feature content relevant to the PURSUE initiative.
“Coast to Coast AM”3 pages
-37-Scienti f ic Debriefing .J ."i ' ·,qooper: I would guess it was on the order of 20 to 30 second.s 1af'ter sunset, that is / , jμst a guess. And this is all the counting I was doing to give ·you the timing and : I •. ~ ~ere ~a s interference from the ground stations. iI 1 1, .~,-llch: Did you observe capsule sta.bility - did you :f'eel it ~s holding sufficient'.cy I ·f_ ~till for time exposures? cboper: Of course, we knew it would be moving. Did better than I thought i t would. Huch: For the most part they came out quite clear. Bill Armstrong: You get pitch up at the rate of 4° per minute. Cooper: Actual:cy, you had more than that. Shepard: During the Zodiacal light sequence, you had over .5 degrees :per minute. Question: What are your attitude tolerances •in ASCS? Cooper: I would say within about 5 l/2 degrees. This will be a very slow variance. Question: How fast is this per minute? The period is 2 to 3 minutes per oscillation. John Ve:n Beckel: It is about .05 degrees per second. ,, Shepard: The limits could be as much as 11 degrees. John Van Beckel: It is pretty close to plus or minus 10 degrees. Cooper: Did you ge~ anything :from·,.the latter portion of the picture? The airg.l.ow pictures? Mercer: Yes. Cooper: I worried that the angle of the camera was down too much. Huch: was there anything unusual that happened through the night? Cooper: There was a lot of lightning. Huch: Was there an accumulatio·n of moisture on the window? Coop-er: No. To me it didn't seem to cut down too much. Huch: You reported a lot\ of lightning. - Cooper: Right when I was taking dim light pictures there were several thunder- . storms and a lot of lightning.
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 216 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.