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.
“Low Earth orbit”1 page
·,scientific Debriefing •l2- Bill Armstrong: You feel brightness suitable f'or a rende~vous be something on the order. of second or third magnitude. I • l • .' • . ~ l • • . •. • - ' ' Cooper: Yeso Bill: That 1s one of t he main things we wanted to ·rind out.. Does of the secon~ night l ook about right? Was the third night too d:l.m'l . ' ., Cooper: Yes, the third one is .getting ·a little too d:l.mo I • Bill: Do you think you have got to have good sighting information .to pick• I • . ,. these up ev:en 'W'ith bright light7 J' I C~o:per: Well, it is a pretty big sky at night .up there and there are a lot of bright starso I t hink ·you're going to have to have some -sight~g,..date. to get within a ~easonable ~one area to hunt . for ito McKee: What about the flash ·:rrequency r ate'l • Cooper: I think the f lash rate could be cut downo I think you could maybe IhaJ.ye the flash rateo • I woul.d rather .- see it twice as bright and see it fl.ash ·\ . , . , half as of'teno , A flash , rate, even -one every two seconds is stii;t distinctive. ·:. . ,. . . I May1>e not quite as distinctive as ·the one per second, but it •Still wbuld . ' attract your ~ttention. _Bill: • How about the· deploy marks?
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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.