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.
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY UNIVIEll81TY OP' CALIP'OIINIA LOIi ALAM09, NIEW MUICO TO: Dr. Jocelyn Gill DATE: July 13, 1962 Readily detectable structure would produce ve.r1e.t1ons of o-N1 and aNa ot about half the attenuation figure given in equations (18) and (19) which is near the threshold of detectability. I have not yet found an author who estimates the concentration of Ne or N02 'in the atmosphere; Bates and Nicolet discuss the reactions which lead to it in the book "'lhe Earth as a Planet", edited by G. P. Kuiper (Volume II of The Solar System). Nicolet calculates the photodissociation time as 200 seconds during daytime, and shows the concentration must be so low that no effect on solar observations would be found. As a general conclusion, it seems to me more likely that N02 would be responsible for an absorbing layer, generated perhaps with the aid of downward diffusion of NO to higher pressure regions favoring oxidation to N~. 'lhe color suggested by Glenn fits very well', as may be quickly verified by looking thru. the vapor space above concentrated nitric acid. Experimental Proposal. Ideally, one could ask for the absorption coefficient as a function of wave length (over a very wide spectral range) and time after sunset on the air volume investigated. I t seems possible to get very useful data with a relatively simple experiment perhaps possible of inclusion in one of the manned orbital flights. Using a slow-speed movie camera, photograph the star field and such planets (including the moon) as opportunity permits, with approximately a 10° field of view and enough exposure to pennit photometric measurements as the light sources
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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.