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.
“Coast to Coast AM”3 pages
Scientific Debri efing -25- ( Cooper continued) ·a brown look, Everything predominantly had a. bluish cast . .All. the :wat er, all the sea water, looked very very bright blue. Even the Salton Sea looked very blue. And areas -we ,know 'were heavy toreat • '. areas looked kind of blue-green. The areas that a.re definitely brown you can tell they a.re brown~ ' I Soules: I have a. question on the thunderstorms. Could you hear ·sta.tic'l Cooper: I could hear. it day or night and on both HF and UHF.. It was. almost. instantaneous . As I woul~-- see the lightning and the clouds light up , I : 1 • .. would get the static. ~ • ·: Soules: What i s the frequency band on HF'l Cooper: HF i s 15 megacycles. The. static was louder in :the HF the.μ ·in tbe rUHF. You could j ust hear ·it, it wasnlt high magnit ude. • . Soules: Was there a difference in loudness between day and night'l Cooper: I think night side w.as considerably louder. Of course I noted ' thUDdersto~ were louder ,on ' night side. There were large _masses of thunderstorms out to the east of Australia. " 0 ' SoV,les: Did the flash come tram below the (?a.psule or •could you look off / ~t ~ -. angle 'l
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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.