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.
“Gray”5 pages
22 Schirra - Paul Backer could trace them down at least. He was the film-handler. He could chase them down. O'Keefe - Minnaert has suggested that after moonset, that there might be a lunar zodiacal light. (Minnaert, Light and Color in the Open Air, p. 295.) Schirra - Oh. O'Keefe - It's a dim hope. Schirra - Getting back to this light magnitude in relation to stars is about 12 to 15 magnitude. I wouldn't even see this . I suspect Gordon won't unless he just happens to look out at the right time and has enough lighting. Now with instrumentation we could detect it, but visibly with the naked eye you can't detect because you can't see through the window. You can't detect this low illumination level. I might add that I saw something subsequent to the flight that · really flipped me. I was on route to the West Coast on a night flight (commercial). I was sitting way in the back in the tourist section in middle of a three-seater, and thought I was anonymous, when the stewardess came roaring back and said ~mdr. Schirra, would you come up front;'' and out of my obscurity I was drawn to the cockpit and I said to myself that we ' ve either lost a pilot or co - pilot. (Laughter) So I went roaring up front and the passengers were looking with a degree of apprehension, at least. I went up to the cockpit and looked out and we were heading West just after sunset and a
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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.