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.
“Tibet”2 pages
. Scientific Debriefing -13- Cooper: Those deploy marks worked real well. They were excellent for getting in 1·etroattitude also. They -position your head ·to a real positive position, ' , I " I Bill: We have read the attitude ·records pretty carefull:yo You were between ' 20 a.nd 22 degrees, so you were right in .there. Do you think the window I smudges, the discoloration of the window, might have had significant effect? Do you think it produced enough attenuation to cause any trouble? , . Act~ I tried and tried to note how much attenuation you get at .night. It's just a few seconds until the time you get dark-adapted; I thought, . you became dark .adapted very rapidly, and I didn't see or note any real attenuationo • • I am sure there was some as there was definitezy smudge layers there .. .- But·,,. it didn't seem to be.... The bright stars sure seemed bright. ' . ,,,. (, Bill Armstrong: • J)id you act~ see the light against the ground'l • , •. \ . Cooper: Yes. I made this comment ·here that I even saw it against the thunderstorm. I · o John Boynton: Go:;t.;do, you talked about the flash rate. The flash rate in , your debriefing ·might have been ·. slightzy below a flash per ·second. , Cooper: I did it on the tape • . I counted off here on the. tape so. you could get it of~ the t~pe. I counted 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; It seemed to me that slightzy s+ower ·than ·one flash .per. second..
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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.