Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part II, 1965

This is a preliminary Part II transcript of the Gemini 5 (GT-5) flight crew debriefing, prepared by the Spacecraft Operations Branch of NASA's Flight Crew Support Division and dated September 2, 1965. It records astronauts Cooper and Conrad at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy. They discuss how the spacecraft systems worked, including the platform and the OAMS thruster failures. The transcript also covers operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, training, premission planning, and medical aspects. It was originally classified Confidential.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: August 30 - September 2, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 5 flight crew technical debriefing. NASA conducted this debriefing between August 30, 1965, and September 2, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Charles “Pete” Conrad described observing debris and “snow” and “all sorts of glittering pieces of this, that and the other thing” in the “Visual Sightings” section of the document (pages 157-220).

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Clearly. We saw the air glow as usual, always
around everywhere - - around the night .
We did see streaks in the air glow that they talked
to us about -- the dark streaks in it which ' Jim and
Ed mentioned. They are really definitely there .
Right -- banded are~s . And we saw this one in the
southern Aurora down on the southern celestial pole
which was quite - - pretty unus~al. Reall y hard to
def ine at f irst too -- just what it was.
Yeah , it looked like a part of the air gl ow, but it
was actually an Aurora - - i t changed the
It changed the air gl ow thickness too
Changed the air glow thickness and it changed the
smooth curvature of the earth -- it put a halt in
the black outline of the earth --
Right.
And i t was a very green band of what you'd -- what
kind of Aurora do you call that where it is sort of
like a sheet
Yeah the stria or striden -- somethi ng like
that .
Yeah.
Then one other -- the only other observation other
than we did see a lot of micrometeorites and I saw