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.
• 7 off in the vacuum? Schirra · - This might be a way of doing it. Having it sublime away or something of this order. O'Keefe - That could be done. If that were done ... Schirra - I definitely feel that th~s should not be a neglected problem; if we, for example, do remove the window cover from the Apollo command module. It definitely should have some type of protection when the star rocket goes. This is going to be a by-product of its own combustion, it won't leave marks on the window. I saw marks on mine as weli as a clouded effect and I feel so strongly about this~- When I had the sun at oblique angles shallow to the window I could see this film much as you describe it. Smokers in the gr~up will appreciate this. On the inside of an · automobile window, you can see the smoke condensa tion on there which you very rarely get washed off until you wash the car yourself . You see this when you have light at very oblique angles across this window. This is about the same type of intensity - it is not enough to restrict your vision although it does affect it at night. This is exactly why I make the point. I think · that is about the easiest analogy I can make for you. Dr. Nordberg - You say this was on the Mercury window after the exhaust. Schirra - Yes sir, this is the result of this exhaust gas bathing this window as the rocket lit and left almost instantaneously, but the gas does form over it.
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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.