Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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.

.....-- --:-1--- ,___ • - - UN IVERS IT Y OF CA LI FOR N I A
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABOltATOllY
(CoNnACT W-740S•BNG-36)
P.O. Box 1663
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO
IN JU!PLY
a1P1a TO: J -l6•8J.2
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JUL I 7 1962
Dr. Jocelyn Gill
Room 62033
Federal Office Bldg. No. 6
Headquarters, N.A.S.A. I .-.·.. riot, ¥..; ,
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Washington 25, D. C• . ,.
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Dear Dr. Gill:
-The June 29 issue of Science brought to my attention J. H. Glenn's comments
on "The High layer~'. It seemed possible that the layer he described could be
.accounted for as a region of relatively large nitrogen peroxide (N02 ) concentration,
and the past two weeks have been spent in checking this hypothesis • Unfortunately
I am not familiar with either photochemistry or upper atmosphere physics so the
following analysis leaves much to be desired; the hypothesis seems tenable, however,
f . so I would like to bring it to your attention.
Effective path length and comparison with possible surface observations.
Referring to Figure 1, the height (H) of a point at a distance (L) from a point
on the surface of a sphere of radius (R) can be found from the formula
(1)
which has the solution
(2)