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
76 was that really Mercury? Well, I knew it was Mercury just by having had the opportunity to have Mercury projected on approximate launch day, so I knew it had to trail the sun, and everytime we ran the ~lanetarium, we had Mercury projected tracking the sun, on the s an. e pat h , of co u rs e . Gill - So it is a great help to kn ow what things are there and where they are before you take off. Schirra - Yes . You've got to have most of this stuff in your mind rather than have to refer to something to remind you of it again. This is why you can get confused as I was, when I was drifti ng, as what star or constellations I was looking at. Shoemaker - We have one more question. I think this is rathe r a trivial one. I don't think we need to dwell on it. Did the moon interfere with your view at anytime, or did you make use of it in anyway? Schirra - I used it liberally, of course, for attitude reference. On e best example, on the third orbit, I was drifting and then restore d my attitude during the night rather than during the daytime. We were trying to determine whether we could get the attitude back both daylight and night. Out of the unknown attitude, I first picked up the horizon which was on the night side, very easily, which then gave me roll and pitch and then I had no idea which way to go for yaw. We had no compass ... whether it would work or not is someth ing else. I started looking around at this starfield which was not on my flight path, by far, and finally, Cassiopeia became quite obvious
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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.