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.
“Gray”5 pages
,. • I Scientific Debriefing • -ll- Cooper: I think so. I think with that brightness~ if you know approximately '. where to look for the thing and with _it flashing, you certa~ ought to be ( able to find it pretty· readily. Day: , Do you think similar experiments should be carried on ·or is this sμfficient'l Cooper: I think this prob~bly shows us 'What we:- really want to seeo I think ther e is going to be problem like there is in .aircraft a As YO:U move to it you are going to have to have something that gives a little bit more capability to obtain distance f'rom it at the time; su~ as perhapa,-two lights , that you cou.l~ raμge on; like naVigation lights on aircra:t'to I QuestiQn: Were internal lights .on in the night observations? ,.. . ' Cooper: On most night aides I had all the lights down complet.ely and used ' I I just the glove lights to read ,critical items. Bill Armstrong: On ·t;he third night phase you say you had to do a good bit ,, of' searching. ; Were you searching the entire third night, and when did you fir-st see it'l · , 1 I ·cooper: Slightly past the middle of the night. I think that on the third ~ight side the· brightness was such that it was sheer accident that I found \. If _)rou Just happen to pass it' in t~e scan pattern you might _see it flashing, , I ( :tt would, however,· be very easy to miss. .. •, / I
Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 216 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.