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).

251
Conrad Yes, we kept looking over the area of Gegenschein
to see if we could see and I don't really think it
was the Gegenschein, but--
Cooper There was one area right almost in the immediate
area of the Gegenschein, but not quite . It was
very near that area by maybe five degrees or so
though. There was this one area which appeared
like the Magellanic Clouds .
Conrad Like a real small one .
Cooper Yes, it looked like a small Magellanic Cloud.
That's really what it looked like. I t was quite
near the area where we had been told the Gegenschein
should appear; but, then there were a couple of others
of these that similar types back over closer toward
the other of the regular Magellanic Clouds . So ,
I don't know what they were, and I didn't notice
these before on my previous flight. These were
something that were new to me. We saw a l ot of
planets. We did try taking the polaroid, the two
sheet polaroid filters , and rotating them to all
different positions to see if we had circular
or linear polarity coming out of the sun. I
tried the sun both while well up and while setting.
..
~19E►~:JtA b,