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.
visible. Cloud coverage, there was a lot of it. The first three days were relatively clear and from then on there were lots and lots of clouds. About the only area that was consistently clear was the Sahara and the Red Sea a.rea. The States were cloudy, as was Mexico, South America, Southern Africa, and a great deal of t he ocean was cl oudy. Lovell The entire area of the Paci fic Ocean was cloudy. Borman Again we ca.n reiterate that i t would be pretty tough to count on being able to observe specific landmarks at ari::t" given time. The horizons were interesting. In the daytime I never noticed much of a difference between the horizon. We've drawn pictures of them with little notes beside them that have been carried back, and which will be published. We noticed the difference in the horizon end the air glow l ayer between a f'ull Moon and a no Moon. When we had a f'ull Moon there was a definite Earth l~er, then almost a normal blaclmess, and then a definite band of ai r glow. When we had no Moon or a quarter Moon, the area between the Earth and the outer air glow wa.s more milky. Lovell That's right. For sextant sightings the best thing to use, during a full Moon, was the bottom part of the air glow or the Earth's horizon, which was probably the upper air hori-
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.