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
134 Big Dipper. It was definitely a satellite, and ~e tracked it on the IR and we used the recorder. It will be interesting to see if they got any data of it. We were never close enough to see any satellites and to pick them out as far as definite features. Lovell They were just points of light. Borman Just light points. There certainly was not any problem viewing the ground. As we have already mentioned over the radio, we were able to see the Astrodome. The horizontal markings, or the east west markings, on the S-8/D-1, pattern stood out loud and clear when we acquired it. It is very akin to flying an a i rpl ane at high altitude. Roads stood out well, rivers stood out well, and beaches particularly well. Towns were a little more difficult to determine, but when you had them you could easily see the l ayout and appar ent size. Also, the atmosphere made a vast difference. If there was any sort of haze or cloud, it definitely cut down your vision. When we finally got over the Himalayas in daylight, it was easy to see why it was so clear. lovell Haze does affect sightings from space as well as it does from airplanes. It is very similar. If the area is pretty hazy, it is goi ng to decrease tr:e contrast of the ground, and makes viewing ground objects very difficult. Where you have
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.