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 \ inversi on. Hanel: Cooper: Hanel: .;:l heparcl: the smoke? Cooper : was bl~ Hanel: Hanel: in polar Cooper: an airplane. ·clouds Hanel: pictures? Cooper: the \ fcient:lfic Debriefing -46- • f 1 ( .• I ~ , ·.;. •Aiuestion: Could you determine wind direction and velocity by SillOke?l ~ ,.·~ f I' ,,,. Cooper: I could tell direction - over the Tibet·area the wind 1was from the south. I, ,i I ,I! 1;, '" I• '!J.,. ·~uestion: Did you see industrial smoke? 'i l,_ ~coper : I remember one fairly large area there was considerable haze and factory 1 ~ype smoke winding up, but don't remember where it was. It seemed to be ;1 like an You did not see the motion of the clouds? No I could not determine the motion ~f the clouds. Oh, you mean velocity by the way the smoke was moving. I mean the clouds were moving . Your first question was could he tellwind velocity and direction from I don't know whether I could judge velocity or not. I could tell the wind ving fairly strongly, because the smoke appeared to c9me out of the smoke stacks flatly, it didn't drift up. But looking at the clouds, I could not tell which direction the wind was blowing. Did you have difficulty in seeing Cirrus clouds? Another question. We may have some trouble distinguishing snow from clouds regions. You had no difficulty in distinguishing snow from clouds? No. I thought the snow was very very distinct. It is just like flying Sometimes when the snow is very smooth and even, it is difficult to tellclouds from snow. You can determine the cloud height if you have a good perspective of the cloud height. You can tell vhether the clouds are low or medium or very high clouds. You never took two pictures of the same a~ea? That is, two overlapping '·. Yes, I think I ~id over the Himalayas. I have two pictures of almost same area of .the Tibetan High Lake area. - ----.--- . ~rI .·. . .···. •.
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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.