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
.... 84 We don't li ke to let things go on without knowing at what they are; and you explore them pretty thoroughly, maybe with limited know ledge, but at least you try to get it down. I have been fighting like mad to get this continuous tape recording . This was invaluable to get answers just like Larry and I and 1rs . Cameron went back and tr a ced out some of this like the smog layer. I would have remembered this, but I probably couldn ' t have tol d you when I s aw it without referring back to this continuous tape . This is some thing we are not getting . O' Keefe - It es quite a fascinating thing to l i ste n to t he se tape recordings; undergoing this is a tremendous experience . You c an hear what the person is - I think that is a debt to humanity that it ought to be done. Schirra - I ' ve been fighting for it all along . At least, we ought to be able tp store £or a period of ti me and then dump it in fast time and then retape . Dunkelman - And with your flight we actually see the be ginning of an interesting turn of events . In the past, people on the ground - I think we had ... S ch i r r a - Sure . Dunkelman - Would tell the astronaut what to look for - now in your case, when you saw this brownish smog thing - here ' s a case where you could have said to the ground, "now, you lo.ok" now, it seem~-d bright enough, so if there were any people on the ground - Schirra - Unfortunately, I ' d left my last point of contact which was
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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.