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
I 47 back to the planetarium (to reconstruct his flight path.) •.. Schirra - I sure wish I had thought of this a long time ago when was fresher on this. Gill - It would fix things in your mind too - you'd be able to see them again right away to pin them down. Dubin - How long did you see this? Schirra - I would not say seconds, I would say minutes, Nordberg - Did this go away simply because of your progression in orbit or because of your drifting? Schirra - I think more because of the drifting, perhaps. Dubjn - Did you see the stars through it? Schirra - There again, I didn't have time to track stars through it. When I say minutes, I don't mean a whole bunch of minutes, I mean one or two or three minutes. Dubin - Yes, but do you know whether you saw stars moving relative to the band? Schirra - No, they weren't . It wasn't relative to the band. That ' s a good question, now that you bring it up. Dubin - In other words, the stars seemed to stand still. Schirra - The band and the stars were planted together, much the sam e way as you would see the Milky Way in a sense. That's a very good point. O'Keefe - You saw a bunch of things there. It might have been Aldeba r an or it might have been Antares. Schirra - I suspect that is what I did see at Antares or Alpheca, and I think that is in that same spectrum there . I think rather
Not linked to a story yet.
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.