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.
“Los Angeles Times”3 pages
8 Nordberg - Could you, were you able to observe, during the orbital flight any decrease in the film on the window. It may have evaporated away , or did it just stay? Schirra - I was hoping to see that and I did not observe a decrease o This surprised me too. I would anticipate that that gas would sub - lime awayo I suspect that the vehicle itself • ,.we are getting into the fireflies again - but the vehicle itself is surrounded by an environmento We have the same problem when we try to run a capsule or · spacecraft in an altitude chamber. It is outgassing the water cooler systems and other components even in a man created vacuum .and as a result we can't maintain this vacuum because it is creating an environment all the time. I think this is what we have done in the Mercury spacecraft with the by- product hydrbgen peroxide gas and the water coolers antl this is where I feel our firefly, frost particles come from. Oid you notice ~b~the ·~ay- getting into that, - that the particles were observed almost immediately after I w·as •in orbit? - I said, "I see frost flakes." Mr. Dubin -~ You were in sunlight at that time too •. .. Schirra - That's correct. This is my only definition of the difference in the way the sunlight itself gets to where I waso Meaning that at sunrise it goes through a lot of atmosphere, and as I get into sun above my horizon, I have no atmosphere; so then its white again. Nordberg - This deposit is of great interest to us . That is
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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.