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.
“Pacific Ocean”1 page
64 do with spare part items or items like that. Nordberg - It's again the depth. Schirra - Well, we are working a movie camera where TIROS is taking stills, is what you are saying. Tennyson - Exactly, and you imply a height which the eye in itself in a still picture mode can't see, but as it goes you say, ah, ha - this moves at a different speed, and therefore, it had to be higher. Schirra - I would accept that, except ~or the photograph I have here which shows this depth. Or is it reminding me of it? I do not know. Do you see the depth I talk about in that photograph on page 9? Tennyson - To some degree (perhaps), b~t, no, not as directly. I found that picture interesting, but as indecisive as a good many of these prints are. Schirra - Well now, do you have all of the~e Weather Bureau photographs? Nordberg - I have not seen all of them - well, we may not have the m - I find that sometimes it is very peculiar that as a NASA outfit - NASA Center - we often have less immediate access to some of these • films than the Weather Bureau has - (Laughter). Schirra - Well, let's -- I find this disturbs me very much in that when I yielded to taking a camera·, I actually did want to take one, but I wanted to make people fight to give me the best piece of equipment they could get rather than fust take a camera. I wanted it very clear that those people who could use this data would get
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.