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.
“Nevers”23 pages
',' I Scientific Debriefing -17- I Cooper: Maybe as long as a minute. I doubt if it was that long, I 30 or 40 seconds. I lost it because it got too weak. It was a long~ :f'rom being. straight out on the horizon but as it got . on up towards that,, direction it faded outJ Bill: In checking the plot, it ·1ooks like it varies from a little over second magnitude when you forst saw it to about a sixth magnitude when the light was turned off. ' ' • I / McKee : Do you know what angle you pitched down to'l Cooper: . I believe it was to -40. I was then at ~he angle we were to pitch to. . I apparently had eased off in ya~. However ·it tracked pretty well right up the window. So the yaw was fairly ~ell: ·on. But the., · • - i light was off a li~tle further to the lef'to " ·, . Bill:· Did you· ever look away from the light and then .look . back? able to do this and ·pick it up again? , Cooper: .I took ray eyes off of it and had them on the photometer and looked •• through the hole in it and extincted it. Turned the dial the wrong way in / ',.,1 • the ,dark,,' and I- did extin.ct ·all right.· I thought I'd ge1; a good reading on ·, • • .: ' • ,,, I I ,I ' ll~ , ~ ' • ' I : ~... I • , , it. I gave that device ·up. It did extinct. Bill: ;• Did you ever notice any change
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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.