Documents / Official release

Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part II, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 325 pages · text from the file's own layer

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).

out on us and we began to drift off in yaw.
Conrad Dropping out wouldn't have been bad, but when it
dropped out it also commanded some thrusting.
Cooper We got some real good blips out of it .
Conrad We were alining i n the Horizon Scan Mode and I got
the impression that it pitched us up .
Cooper We wer e already alined , and we had gone to Orbital
Rate and Horizon Scan, just to come alcng there in
time to go in . As soon as we had the Ilatform all
al i ned , and before we went in on the night side , I
decided I would realine the pl atform ji.:st very
briefly . So I had gone to SEF and to IULSE and I
was checking and pulsing it . • But becai.:.se t hen in
SEF position all your torquing is done f rom your
Horizon Scanner. When t he Horizon Scar,ner began to
drop out we began to get real erratic needle display
and it looked like our platform alinemEmt was deter
iorating. I was trying to correct thiB , but
obviously, it was really kicking us off . That was
when we went t o CAGE , tried desperatelr to get it
caged and realined in time , and thought we had i t
realined . We may have had it reasonab:.y well alined
by the time we f inally yawed right . I ·; looked like
it was . The needles wer e all zeroed out and

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 325 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.