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.
“Headquarters”6 pages
It thus appears that there i s a strong i llusion whi ch exaggerates angl es near the horizon, and whi ch was evi dently also present i n MA-6, s i nce Lt . Col. Glenn a lso reports 7° to 8° as the height of the luminous ba nd. The i llusion is perhaps comparable to the well-known illusion which makes the moon seem larger near the hori zon. Carpenter also noti ced and photographed the Glenn ef fect. He reports white objects resembling snowflakes, seen at sunri.se on all three orbits. ' However, he also saw these objects 7 minutes after the f i rst sunrise and aga i n 43 minutes after sunrise; and zll, llm, 23m, 26ffl, 3(1!! and 45m after the second sunri se. It i s thus quite clear that they are not related to sunri se, except pe rhaps i n the sense of being most easily visible then. Carpenter managed to photograph a few of these particles. Some of them we re very considerably brighter than the moon, which was then very near the f i rst quarter. At this t i me, the moon i s about -10; the particles may have been be t ween -12,5 magni tude (10 x bri ghter than the moon) and -15 magni tude (100 x bri ghte r than the moon). The second i s -considered more l i kely, in vi ew of the appearance of the full moon (-12,5) as shown on MA-6 photographs. At -15 , the parti cle brightness i s consistent with centi meter size snowflakes. The particles were verbally described by Carpenter as between l mm and 1 cm i n size , and having a strong visual resemblance to snowflakes. Shortly before reentry, just at sunri se, Carpenter performed the de ci si ve experi ment of hitting the capsule walls with hi s hand. The blows promptly resulted i n the liberation of large numbers of particles. It i s thus clear that 1 7 at least those parti cles observed in the MA-6 flight emanated from the capsule . The possibility that the particles might be dye marker or shark re pe l lant , both of which are green and both of which are exposed to the va cuum, was considered by Mr. Frank M. Crichton, NASA capsule inspector. Crichton had te st s made which demonstrated that ne i ther materi al tended to escape f rom the
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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.