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
• • • 27 Mercury were traversing was in a plane something · like · thiso This is your point I think, Larry, Isn't it? Dunkelman - That's one Schirra - So they come down this way which mathematically isn't hard to solve, but you should consider this. Dubin - This plane may vary a certain amount and it is very difficult to know which way. Schirra - The spacecraft at this point was under attitude control and was fairly tight in a sense. Roman - I think Larry's point is that though we · don•t · real l y know if we are ... if we are actually taking a traverse st r aigh t through the atmosphere, it may be something in front, a tangen t . line, or behind it. Dunkelman - The first thought _is to put a line right · through there, and at this point this may be on the plane but · it may not be that. Some may be ahead or behind, or both .... Schirra - In other words, these layers in this sense could be all staggered out and this one stacked like a bunch of steps in a sense. Dubin - And they could be higher in altitude than a simple r i ght angle projection. O'Keefe - It's quite safe. Schirra - I was looking at two dimensions in a sense. Cameron - The right angles of proj~ction and this · is the twilight zone of the spectrum.
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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.