Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 136 …Borman We saw small towns along the coast of Mexico. Lovell Also South America. I wonder…
  • p. 169 …Borman We a l so took a seque.nce a l ong the southern coast from…
142
The Void was very easy t o pick out a~d to take the
readings. The Zodiacal ligh t test was deleted in real
time. We substituted Sirius for the Zodiacal light.
Borman The star measurements were done with no problem. Night
l and measurements are noted on the tape and in the log
book. We did ~ave some problem with t hese because t he night
land was covered with clouds. So we were trying t o skew the
spacecraft al ong and avoid clouds. I'm afraid that we may
not have always miss ed the clouds. The same situation
exis ted with t he night water measurem,~nts. We had very
good luck on the Pola.:~is .
We had good luck on the Polaris a~d good luck on the
booster. We should h,i ve had pretty good luck on
Gemini 6. We were abl e t o t rack it . We had good
luck on the sled.
Lovell We hope we had good luck on the sled.
Borman They called us up from the ground and said they had
a thousand percent on t hat.

About this file

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.