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.
44 Shoemaker - --~hy don't we say we'll ~lan on this and then · we can · make the arrangements -- Schirra - I am afraid that I can't do it rapidly, but I'd say the first part of April would be okay. Shoemak er_~ Jocelyn, would you like to take this on to set it · up and follow it through? Gill - Certainly o Sch i rra - I would like to nail this one downo I~ has been · botheri ng me f or a long time and I just don't seem to be getting any · ans wers that I would like to have as well. Gill - It is possible to have hindsight here. I n other words, we can recon s truct the crime and it is worth doing, I think. Dunke l rn-an - I am glad you mentioned that you. could see some • stars dimme d through this patch because-if you don't see -any,-1:he patch turns out to be extremely bright . Dunkelman - It's about 300 times higher than what the normal airglow (seen) edge - on is . Schirr-a - Well, it wasn't dim by any means. Dunkelman - It wasn ' t dim - the answer I get _is that it is about 3 ergs/cm 2/sec which is extremely bright and its structure is extremel y high . It is about three hundred times brighter than the normal ai r glow o I think we can "home - in" on this brightness rather nicely because, if you saw color, you know it is a dirty brown, but if it was color, that does require at least SO to 100 times more t han the normal night airglow. Schir~a - That's why you were asking me earlier was there a color
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 216 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.