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
74 estimate it to be about 80 to 90%. When I went over - the United States was clear east of the Sierra's, but it "sacked in" (clouded over) again by the time I got to the Gulf of Mexico, so I just had a small band when you look at this part of the United States . This is not very much percenta ge-wise. South America, I didn't get to until the 5th and 6th orbits, so I was over water all the other time. The northsic portion of the contin en t was cloudy and finally I got into the clear on the 5th and 6 orb it s by the time I'd just left South Americ a. Aus t ralia, of course, was ni ght, so it turned out that there wasn't much I could s ay about it . ·other than the fact that it was clouded over too . I saw l ightn ing as I got to the eastern half of Australia. ill - You never saw any large view of water then? In other wor ds, you didn't see any part of an ocean? Schirra - No, I expected to have some fun looking at shorelines . This is what I really wanted to look at, to see if I could see color contrast and even the Pacific Islands. I had hoped to se e th e Hawaiian Islands which would have been a real e asy one to pi ck up, an d I think I had one little li mpse; about as much as i f you 'd fly 9/10 cumulus structure and you pop one through there. That's abou t as much as I had and I couldn't even identify which Island I was looking at. O'Keefe ~ Probably Haleala or else ... Schirra - ight have even been Hawaii itself, I am not sure , wh ich is probably the highest of the bunch, and it mi ght have popped up through it.
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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.