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.
9 why I asked the question because we observed this on Tiros tooo One of the two cameras was just completely clouded for a few hundred · orbits and then gradually after a few hundred orbits it improved a little bit o Schirra - I need a little more flight time: I ' m all for ito Nordberg - We eliminated this by putting a sheet over it in third stage and since then we have never had any troubleo Schirra - Sure p that's ito I am sure this is something we can't let rest o We've got to cover these windows to protect them from clouding during the transition to where we are now to space itselL Dubin - Do you ever detect any gas around the vehicle? In sun light due to shadowing of the vehicleo Schirra - No, I looked for thato The only vestige of something .• around me were these particles as we have described them. O'Keefe - Well, it is very helpful to know that they were seen throughout the dayo Schirra - Yes, I think really what it depended on was how much sunlight I had coming through the window. If it was really bright within the vehicle, I didn't see them as wello If I got an off - angle where the sun was fairly shallow in relation to my windowp I could then see these particles; of course, up until my loca l noonp I did not see them anyway. -O'~Keef·e - About this problem of condensation and the local environ ment you are speaking of, I think that someone investigated that at the Manned Spacecraft Center . It is quite true that with an outflow
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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.