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.
“Los Angeles Times”3 pages
31 Cameron - Was this a patch, or do you think there was a layer there? Schirra - It was a layer across my whole visible horizon. It wasn 9 t just a blob in other words . Cameron = And is that the only time you saw it? Sch i rra - That is the only time that I recall ever ha~ing seen it . At one particular point - Was it at 5 hours 20 minutes (in the record)? I don 9 t seem to refer to it too well in here. Dunkelrnan - We had to find it. Schirra = You had to dig it out? Dunkelman = We had to dig it out from your self-debriefing later . Roman = Was there any color apparent in this case? Schirra - I would like to refer to it, Nancy, as a little smog color , having a little brown in it. Sort of Brownish gray - rathe r it was n ' t black or white. It was definitely toward the brown smog t hing. I 9 m sure you have had the unfortunate privilege of letting down in Los Angeles and seeing what smog brown is. Roman = Right . Sch i r r a - This isn 9 t what you would see from the surface of Lo s Angeles, but above it when you look into this. Sort of a dust y color i n a sense . If you'd like to use that term . I don't like t o use that term because if you have seen a dust cloud you've seen more s olidity to it in your mind at least. I don't want · to give you that picture. Definitely a fog effect rather than seeing particles . I think of it that way.
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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.