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.
“Gray”5 pages
• ;,scientif ic Debriefing -39-,. f : }bu,ren: Did you take it off prior to retro? I,, ' I ► Qooper: Yes. I took it off just prior to retro. I stowed it :lfl the glove compartment ~ (~rren: Did you take a reading of it at any time? I • I ~ I I '·I croper: No, I didn t. W~rren: Di"d you place it vertically? Where did you place it? Cooper: I placed it vertically. Warren. We got from that .and also from film badger you carried on under I clothing - - - We got an estimate of 15-20 milliroentgens. I think you would get more in an X-ray than you had here. It was. about what expected. Warren: Is there any particular reason that the 7th and 9th orbits were left out • or were you just too busy? ' Cooper: I don't remember which orbit I missed. I believe one of them I was q~te busy trying to get this condensate water situation straightened out and debated .. turning it on later, but decid,ed I had better not. I Warren: It wouldn't have served much use later. r Cooper: That was the 5th orbit. Warren: The 6th and 7th were the ones missed. Cooper: The 6th one was where I was having the condensate difficulty. I don't know why I missed the other one on the 9th orbit . . We weren't schedule to run one on the 9tht Bill: He had one at 9 hours and 4o minutes OX} the 7th orbit; then he had another one on t he 8th, 11:15 to ·ll:25. ' And then you go into rest period after that. Warren: We got that. Bill: ~e went into rest period a:f'ter that. Warren: Late in the night, you turned the tape on continuous and it steyed on ' the rest of the flight. Was there any particular reason you could not have le:f't ·the switch on? I Cooper: You mean the radiation? We hadn't planned to do this because of power ' ~
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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.