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.
“Coast to Coast AM”3 pages
24 O'Keefe - It is not a difficult thing to see the zodiacal light under reasonably favor~ble conditions. Schirra - No, I have seen it frequently, but not ' as brilliantly. Gill - Have you seen it in Houston by any chance? Schiira - I have seen it just flying at night~ I haven't seen it from Houston recently, no. Gill - Well, this is the season to see it. You should see it . . . about three-quarters of an hour after sunset. Schirra - From an airplane, you can see it better than yoμ can from a Mercury spacecraft. You don't have this dimming of ligh t through your canopy as you do from the spacecraft~ This is rea lly a spectacular sight. Of course, the pilots were so concerned because they didn't know what it was. This was hundreds and hundreds of miles away, and yet they felt they were in danger . (Laughter) They wanted answers right away. Gill - They got them, didn't they? Schirra - Of course, you've heard that the whole West Coast was enthralled by this sight. It was in the newspapers. Roman - Speaking of the brightness of the zodiacal light, Dr. Mulders, NSF, was in Chile at a high altitude last fall, and he commented to me, that the zodiacal light was so bright that he was able to see it from horizon to horizon without difficulty. Schirra - Amazing--horizon to horizon- ~! am not sure what we a r e going to see at thousands of miles from earth c I suspect that
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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.