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.
“Nevers”23 pages
I fcient ific Debriefing -43- h 1 ~ '\i ~f he city: of El Pase,. I could see some little isolated civilized areas. '.., pever did see the main part of city., tfi: ;Paul Lowman: Did you see any distinct shadows from the terrai!n? Mountains? l t .Cooper: •Yes. You could see shadows of the m_ountains quite clearly. Even more /,\ I blearly than the mountains in the twilight were the shadows from clouds on ground. Paul Lowman: How did the camera o_perate while taking pictures? Do you recall shaking the camera at any time? Cooper: No: I don't recall shaking the camera at all: Paul Lowman: They all look pretty good; I just wanted to make sure. Is there any vibration in the capsule when you are taking pictures? Cooper: No. Very little. It is pretty smooth. Paul Lowman: Do yqu think if you had a cha.nee to sit down with those photographs, you could give us an idea of the inclination to the vertical or horizontal? You said over the West you couldn't see Los Angeles or San Diego, do you remember how far north you could see'l along the coast'l Cooper: I could see three or four hundred miles on up north. There was a lot of cloud cover-a lot of stratus. You could see patterns where the ground caused difference in cloud formation. Paul Lowman: How about on the east coast?I Could you identify anything there'l Cooper : I could see the Cape clearly on one pass e.nd ;the St. Johns river and could see where it ,ca.me in the inlet at Jacksonville. Right to a.bout Savannah, Georgia and clouds became broken and I could see banks of clouds lined on up to what I believe was the bulge of the Hatteras area and prehaps 150 _miles on • further. But clouds wer~ obscuring. I felt I could see quite clearly on up north to Hatteras and perhaps on up to the Washington area. My sight of this was when I made my turnaround. It looked just like a map. It was a great wide expanse of ...
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 216 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.