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
38 mackerel effect that you see in clouds. This is very much a - well, I would say if you · really wanted to do it - well, do · it in water colors rather than chalk. Nordberg - Did it cover your entire field of view? Schirra - It covered my whole field of view, yes. That's where I "suckered - in" thinking that I was looking at "airglow - " what we have used now - I think you understand how I have used airglow and that there were cities below it and stars above it. Then, these cities were defined rapidly as stars and then I - Dubin - You actually saw no horizon then? And you saw none of th e regular airglow? Schirra - No, _I could not see any vestige of the surface of the earth, meaning the true airglow in this sense. Dubin - What you saw then were some of the bands with stars above an d below - you remember how high up you were looking? Schirra - No. If I had not had the fetish of conserving fuel in this drifting period - was most important - not only conserving fuel, but to see what effects the vehicle would get while it drifted over a period of time; in other words, what this minute atmosphere might do to the vehicle, whether it would spin it up or slow it down or what have you. I could have picked up my attitude just by pitching down and pick i ng up the surface of the earth. But then I would have destroyed the period of time that we had been drifting to see if the vehicle attitude had been affected by the orbital period. Roman - For something like that, would it be desirable to carry a small mirror, something like a woman's pocketbook mirror, which you
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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.