Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of the Gemini 7 technical debriefing, dated December 23, 1965, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was made from tape recordings of the crew debriefing held December 19 to 21, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. In it, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell go through countdown, powered flight, insertion, station keeping with the booster, systems, experiments and training. The table of contents also lists a section on visual sightings during orbital flight.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: December 19-21, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 7 flight crew debriefing conducted December 19-21, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Lights and flashes are mentioned and there is discussion about having proper illumination for vehicle docking. Borman and Lovell discuss celestial and terrestrial observational anomalies and note sightings of Mercury, meteors, aurora, and lightning. They also discuss not being able to see any stars once the Sun comes up.
“Cairo”2 pages
132 any flames, debris or anything. Although you did at Fairing Jettison and Spacecraft Separation. Lovell On Fairing Jettison, I saw debris fly, especially during the turnaround. l0.3 Orbital Flight Borman As for .man-made objects sighted , we took sightings of the booster. We had no difficulty in sighting the booster at turnaround and in station keeping with it. We maintained the flashing light in sight throughout the firs t orbit, we saw them on the second orbit, and the third orbit during the night phase. Lovell But you could not tell distance by the flashing lights. Borman No. As a matter of fact, I think it would be impossible to tell distance at night unless you have some sort of illutnination. Lovell Yes, if the lights are illuminating the vehicle, by spread ing it over the vehicle, maybe you could tell. You cannot tell the way they are now. We picked up Spacecraft 6 on the final rendezvous phase, I guess at about five miles. Is that right? Borms.n Right. Again, this is entirely dependent upon where the sun is. Spacecraft 6 was able to see us a long time before we could see them, because we were in a position where the sun
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.