Documents / Official release

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 17
They were quite bright .
O. K. You saw only bright ones. About how many did you see?
About how often did you see any? Could you have made a count of them and
said, 11 Let's l.ook at met eors f'or awhil.e" ?
Yes, we could have.
Could you have sat down there and counted t hem all off as you say them and
give them relative attention?
You see, I hesitate to give you a number because I think that if we did,
you'd tend to come t o the wrong conclusion because we weren't looking out
of the windows at night all the time .
No.
Quite often we had things to do i nside and: we turned the lights up and
never even looked out . .
Oh, you weren 1t dark enough, is that it?
No, we already were looking out. We were attempting to look out and we
couldn 1t see out because we had t he lights way up and, first, we were
working at the window, and secondly, if we we r e we couldn ' t have seen. So
if we give yo\l a number, make sure that you don 't s ay that, O. K. , we say
15 m tears in :four days and therefore they're going t o see .. . and
that.' s not right .
No. o. K. n1rt ber•auec .
If y·o1, want H. number, I saw probal>.Ly between 10 and 20, but again I
wasn ' t looking out; all the time .
No, so you really weren't looking f or a meteor, right?
No , we sure weren ' t .
And you have tor member, also they occur in a rather uninteresting place.

Cases discussed

About this file

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.