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
53 Cameron - I saw the zodiacal light once doing that in Chicagoo I came out of a lighted building. It was the first time I had seen it. It was in a part of the sky where I didn't expect to see it . Schirra - I think that our test, frankly, that have been conducted to determine dark adaptation are not done well enough. I don't think we can really justify how fast we adapt b:y the tests we hav e run . I have yet to see that quan~itative analysis made that shou ld be made. Intuitively, I feel that I ad apt faster than the tes t has ever proven to me. We had very comp l icated systems , such as th at at Pensacola where you pick up the horizon and objects, trucks and airplanes and ships, -- I'm sure you r e member this routine -- an d I never was sympathetic to this study. I think there is a bet t e r way of defining it, however, by having you in an opaque room or rat he r going from a lighted room into an opaque room seeing what can you s ee. Have these measured light sources there and then identify them as rapidly as you can . Of course, you've got to keep identifying because you are adapting all the time. Tennyson - Is it correct then that this window of ours (Vicor window) has .never really been nailed down as far as transmissivity is concerned. Schirra - It has been carefully nailed down, I understand. Roman - Yes, but not under quite the · flight conditions. Schirra - Well, I was carrying this photometer, and did make some measured readings on some objects, but this comes back to the photo meter check on Aldebaran. This comes back ·to what I really made
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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.