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Gemini 4 Experiment Debriefing, 1967

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 224 pages · text from the file's own layer

This NASA file from 1965 combines Mission Operation Report M-913-65-04 on the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight with related correspondence. Memoranda from the Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight describe the planned four-day mission with James McDivitt and Edward White, including a spacewalk, a rendezvous with the booster second stage and thirteen experiments. Later letters and telegrams from NASA's Manned Space Science office concern the astronaut debriefing and requests for GT-4 photography and film for scientific analysis.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: June 3-7, 1965, Low Earth Orbit. Gemini IV was the second crewed mission of the Gemini series. Astronauts James McDivitt and Edward White successfully completed the four-day flight between June 3 and June 7, 1965. The mission included the first American spacewalk. This collection of documents contains a transcription of the astronauts recounting their observations of bright particles outside the spacecraft, dated circa June 25, 1967, on pages 78-81, and page 101.

  • p. 79 …I am rtL)t tal king about any .strange par Licles t hat appeared..... /\nd 11…
  • p. 91 …Are you t a king about micro-,eteor.i tes striki ng the No, I 'm…
  • p. 102 …befor e when you were t al king ab out the dayglow of what conclusion you…
  • p. 135 …said a hand-held gauge was wo1·king. Ground Control said the temperature reading made from…
4Belt l8
windows , the light corning through, that I couldn ':t tell you whether
there ' s anything that if I looked up above I could see an image, or
not . But I t hink that possibly , if we could find a long black
tube and a window with no film on it and some way of closing off
all t..he liv,ht inside the spacecraf t , I fe el that maybe I could look
t1p a.ncl T could have seen t he ulack sky ( and the stars ) .
Yeah , we didn ' t have t.,hat , so I wouldn ' t draw that conclusion from
what. I saw up t..here , All I can say is that you couldn ' t see up
and see t he stars in the daylight because of' all the se other
reasons . Now if you eliminate other reasons, I think probably you
could . I wouldn ' t say f or sur e that that ' s r i ght . The point that
interests you when you ' re talking about accui t y, is t o look down
on the ground and you can see very small objects in the daylight .
So t hat with one is (resolution ) and the other one i~ sensitivity
t o different l i ght levels . And I ' m talking about light levels from
Gemi ni , i n terms of having a niosy background .
I want.. you to be careful of the conclu sion that you made . You've
p;ot thre e 1.hinr~:.: !.hat you ' re obviously tryinp; to make conclusions
out of', and 1 wunl. t,o be sure -t,ha 1. you didn ' t make some of your own
conc:l 11slon:; out ol' t..hc:m. Out of !.h.is Mercury, they have Mercury,
and you ' :re p;oing t.o compa:rc Mcrcm·.v and Gemini observations and you
Look Lhe insiu.e- tlie- spncecraft observat ions and said at night it
was t-'.reat and. in the day time it was lousy . Well , in the daytime
I didn ' t, reel it, was l ousy . I dori ' i, know what standa rd you ' re com
parj ,,g it against. YoL1 ' re comparj ng it against Mercury . I think
,YO\J ' d be very car eful in d rawing that conclusion .
Ancl 1.i1c11 L!H ·r·e ' ~ rwot l1e r ll.rc a that. you want Lo make conclusions on

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 224 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.