Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

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.

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Bormar1 We always had the ACQ off when we were transmitting.
The only possible problems that we could have had with
this expe=lment was when we lost our ~ape recorder. We
could not put some of the data on tape. We had to always
take the data over a receiving station.
Lovell Or use the recorder .
Borman Or use a recorder.
Lovell One problem which we did ha.ve a.nd which I was not briefed
on was the fact that I inadvertently l eft the gear on one
time and it gave a nine second pulse on the main ammeter
system. We could not figure out what this glitch was
coming in on the Main Bus.
Borman This was right after we lost the thrusters . We thought
there might have been something in the ACME bias power
or something in the in,rerter that was breaking down and
putting out a glitch. We called the ground to tell them
we found it and they said t hat i t was exactly what the
ground had thought it was.
Borman Cloud illumination lightning; we got some good
lightning shots for them. Day land measurements, we
got. Ascension Calibration was done twice.