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.
“Gray”5 pages
71 ground as to structure. Could you infer anything about it? Schirra - Amazingly enough I felt I saw every bit of what I see here. The terrain changes, the rivers - one of the best shots - this is of course, South America, that's the one I'd like to use in fact = when I came across South America, here we are, on the sixth orbit, in this area it was all clouded, and I finally broke into the clear - in this sense - just before I got to Rio de Janeir o , and I could see, I think it was the Corono River, I am not sure. This is about where it started clear again. I could trace that river out very easily. Just follow it all the way through there . Roman - To the ocean? Schirra - No, I could not do that. I thought I could, but at t hi s point, it's sort of a local sunrise, so you don't have good vertical lighting on it at this point. Now in Africa, I had vertical lighting almost. This was almost its local noon when I crossed i t . I would like to have seen this large lake right here almost in the center of the mass of Africa , and I don't recall seeing it. 0 9 Keefe - Chad, Chad . Schirra - Yes, I think this is probably when I was conversing with Conno and we had quite a bit of discourse about the suit circuit . O'Keefe - Chad is a very tricky lake anyway. Lots of the reeds in it, and it is very shallow; I think sometimes it just isn't there, s O • • Schirra - I think you just simply get a light reflection off it possib ly . It looked so pronounced here that I wanted to see this as a check point and had it in mind, and I've forgotten ... 0
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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.