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.
“Frank Borman”10 pages
133 was reflecting off our adapter, and they were in a position so that the sun was not reflecting off their adapter. It is a strange phenomenon, but it is entirely dependent upon the sun. Once we acquired Spacecraft 6, it certainly was no problem of maintaining a visual on it. It was no different than it is on the ground in the daytime. Lovell I agree. Borman We sighted two satellites. We saw the Minuteman reentry at exactly the right time and exactly the right place. It looked l i ke a meteorite. Lovell Very brilliant. It broke up toward the end. Borman Very brilli ant, it broke up toward the end, and there were several different pieces flying around. I was surprised at the speed at which it went in. I was also surprised at the control authority required to track it. We did get on it though before it broke up and went out. I hope they got good data on it. Lovell We saw, what we think, were two satellites moving. Borman Yes , we took IR readings on one of them. It was a de£inite satellite in a polar orbit. We took photographs of two satellites in the polar orbits. One of them was below us, crossing from left to right, and the other one wa.s above us, crossing left to right. We picked them up first in the handle of the
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.