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.
“Headquarters”6 pages
Scienti f ic Debriefing -30- l ~--------- 'I 'i f( oules: You saw something over South America? ,! l I fooper: Yes, there is this other higher level I saw over South America. ptanley Soules: Did you see different cloud layers at night? '~ooper: Only i:t there was moonlight and if there were towns or cities below them. On several occasions I could see reflected light particularly through stratus type clouds. Soules: You could distinguish clouds. Does the earth appear as blue to your eye , , as it does in the photos? Cooper: Yes. The overall color is pretty blue. Soules: What is the color of the· twilight zone? ICooper: It is a baby blue~ It is a pure~ pure blue, very, very_ bright. I Soules: Did you see any meteor trails? , I Cooper: No~ ,,Soules: Did you see ·a lot of sun? I T.TCIIY'l't to tell you I did'.C Oper : I Sure did• "....... ., ' Soules: Was there any evidence of a corona? Cooper: No. In fact, the sun appeared to be like the moon 'does i'rom the earth. Very bri ght. You know down here there are all those rays around it. But up there it is just a glob and it is very very whitish bri_gb.t. It doesn't look the same color. It is a very arc-like color, bluish white. ' ' ' - Question: What about the looks of the ds.y slcy? Cooper: ! The ds.y slcy just is not as dark as the nie,:it slcy. It is black and dark but not as dark as the night sky. You can see the brighter .stars on the day side when you are away from the sun and neither it nor the earth shine are coming in the window. Give yourself a few seconds to get dark adapted and you can see the brighter·' On·the order of '3rd magnitl.lde.Istars. They };lave to be fairly ~right to see them.
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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.