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.
“Hill”1 page
32 Dunkelman - We are here to hear yours and I think we should· figure out s ome mo r e of this . I don't want to inject my thought into this, but I was trying to quote you in saying that it is brownish smog layers and wasn 9 t sure how to define it. Sch i rra - Yes. This is dirty brown, not a pleasant brown, not one you would like to see. Sort of like a tattle tale b rown instead of a t attle tale gray. Cameron - Venus was just off the edge of it. I have th e report · of i t~ Schir r a - Let ' s see , where are we there? Cameron - J don't think you are saying anything about that. I was wonde r ing if you noticed Venus at that time? Sch i r r a = There was some point in here where I miscalled Venus or Mercury, I forget which, but this is wrong. I told them to correc t it an d they never did . But anyway this is what I did say. I think you could disprove me very easily, because it just couldn't be t he r e . I for got which one it was I referred to. Venus and the moon · were always together is the whole point» and they were t o me in a hori zont al l ine which gave me a good reference. 0 °Keefe - Cdr. Schirra, there are some important points here. Firs t of all, of course, both Glenn and Carpenter saw stars underneat h th e ordinary airglow layer. Schirra - Yes, I remember. O' Keefe - So it clearly can ' t be seen and one would expect th a t an yw ay. Schirra - I would say that this is substantiated by my report of seeing Mercury as it passed through these layers as Mercury set which
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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.