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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Lovell That was a little scientif ic experiment which we were
asked to do: to see if we could see the blue horizon
line, blue air glow in the daytime by keeping dark adapted
and using the blue filter.
Borman The r esults were negative .
Lovell That is right .
Borman Anything else?
Lovell I think we hit everything on the sextant.
Borman We had no equipment malfunctions with the sextant other
t han t he f act that you got double vision.
Lovell And t he sextant was not as bulky to opera te on t he space
craft as it i s on l and. It is a pretty bulky piece of
equipment, but it is not bad.
11.4 Visual Acuity and Astronaut Visibility and Vision
Test (M-9)
Borman Updating techniques and communications proceduresi This was an
area that was outstanding. I t s eems redundant to comment about it
everytime, but is is true. Equipment set up and usage for t he
vision test and the M-9 experiment, no problem. We tried t his
in the simulator and we tried it in flight and it was t he same.
Lovell The photometer left a little bit to be desired.
Borman Oh , I think we are talking not just about the tests that