Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of Part II of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing, prepared by NASA's Spacecraft Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division, and dated June 18, 1965. The debriefing began aboard the recovery ship USS Wasp and ended at the Manned Spacecraft Center. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White discuss how the spacecraft systems performed, including the platform, OAMS, RCS and control modes. They also cover operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, mission planning and training, and give recommendations for future crews.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Part II of this document contains the “Visual Sightings” section of the debriefing (pages 196-224), where astronauts James McDivitt and Edward White describe their observations while aboard the spacecraft.
“Cairo”4 pages
187 ference on some z odiacal l ight photography that was planned on later flights. The first test was to pitch straight down toward the earth, open the shutter on the Contarex camera ind actuate the pitch- up with the shutter open. Then we'd take another picture and actuall y open the shutter again and activate the pitch-down thrusters, to see if these two thrusters would cause some type of light interf erence to the photography. On the pitch-down part of the phase, we waited till the moon had set, and as we were pointed down toward the earth, we came upon an area fa±rly ~i ear of clouds. But,unfortunately,there were a few soattered lights from homes or cities down bel ow us , which might have caused some interference. I don ' t think so . They were very , very scattered . The pitch-down test was satisfactory. The next one was the one in which we were actually level with the horizon. Again , Jim opened the shutter, I actuated a pitch- up, and closed the shutter. He opened it again , I actuated a pitch-down thruster , - ·• .j. and he closed the shutter. It was a pretty simple test . We took four pictures.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 290 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.