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.
56 pitchJ like this, rollj pitch o In other words ~ you step your way around o It is not a smooth maneuver as you would anticipate in an airplane where you just roll and come around and cut a swathe without changing attitudeo Nordberg - In daytime, it should be really a striking thing, the horizon looking toward the sun and, on either side of the sun , and also looking straight away from the sun it co uld be extremely bright ooo and at 90° 0 Schirra = You know where we are going to have the most fun? It 0 s with the lunar module - the LEM or the Bug in earth orbito By gosh, that's going to be great , because you pract ical ly have an observatory on your hands o A lot of open panel area that doesn't have to be protected for re - entry or exito That will give us our first real opportunity to look in almost any direction at any timeo You should see the fight we had 9 to keep a 5th window in the Apollo command module o They were about to rip it up and save 16 lbso It was in the right seat where you spend 90% of the time on a trans - lunar tripo (gasp) Negative o (Laughter) We said no so we had a seancej that 0 s what we call ito This is when we get · a majority of the astro~auts together and we agree o If there are any dissenters it is just too bad o If they are in the minority~ wel l, we come out with a united opinion. This is how we got our window in Mercuryo It was the result of a seance == it cost $500;000 and I think you know its worth it o It was for observation not only getting attitudes o
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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.