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
10 of gas like that the ambient pressure - the general ambient pressure - is quite different from the pressure right around your vehicle o I still wonder whether you can get the pressure up around the vehicle for the level where condensation takes place" I have been trying to persuade some people that the condensation takes place before it leaves these ports of course as it spreads out in space " The pressure is certainly much higher around the bottom of the heat shield, but I do not know whether that is right or not" Shoemaker - Do we have any more questions on the airglow? They are very usefulo Dr o Liddel - We have two problems here o One is the pressure and the other is the rate of evaporation " O'Keefe - That's trueo Once formed, they may not sublime out. Question is how were they formed. Schirra - I think there is one thing that we might bring into this before we leave it unless there is a separate question on it o The green - yellow~ almost a chartreuse, coloring of these particles, I feel, did not permit you to see the edges of the particles as well as they appeared when they were in the white band in the sense of looking like frost particles o So they looked more like blobs and · this is typical of fireflies themselves " You can ' t def i ne the size of the blob you see as green - yellow ~ but if you see a snow flake, which is white, you can very e asily see its edges in a sense . Not that you focus on them bu t you can visualize that they have edges . This is a point that I don't think I have made in the past,
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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.