Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of Part I of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing. The Spacecraft Operations Branch of NASA's Flight Crew Support Division prepared it on June 16, 1965, from recordings of the debriefing held aboard the USS Wasp on June 9, 1965. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White describe the mission from an operational viewpoint, covering countdown, powered flight, insertion, orbital operations, reentry, landing and recovery. According to the preface, visual sightings were left for a later part.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part I) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Astronaut Ed White recounts seeing “sparkles” during the flight.
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McDivitt White McDivitt little pa r t icles , and this was at sunset . As the flight progressed, each time we had a particle or a group of particles such as a urine dump r ight at sunset or sunrise, the sun would pick these particles up and they would act just like litt l e magnifying glasses and make very bright spots. This is exactly what happened . Did you ever s ee that then? I think you were more in the daylight side . No . I was on the daylight side . I didn't see what you were talking about. It was really something. The whole sky within my view was covered with these little particles- thousands of them . There was obviously a great deal of that stuff in the air all around . As soon as we got turned around I could see trat t he lights were flashing on the booster, and Ed saw them , too. It was pretty apparent . I cal l ed out r i ght away to the gruund that the lights were working. I don't know if they understood what I was talking about or not. I also called out shortly after we came off the booster and we saw it,that it didn't look like we were going to be able to touch it .. because of the high rotational
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.