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…
155
we did every morning. The vision test and the other one.
'Borman The M-9 vision test also caused no problem. As a matter
of fact we did a little interesting experiment of our own.
We used the brace, the head brace and the bite board
everytime but once, and then we co.m.pared the results,
with and without using the head brace or bite boards, the
last day. We noted this in the log book. There was no
difference in the outco.m.e, so I have begun to wonder if it
is necesary. One of the great points o:f interest, was trying
to observe this ground observation at Laredo a.nd we picked it
up 3 times, I believe. Acquisition is very difficult, be
cause of the poor terrain features. I never did really
see the smoke pots, but we did see the dashes that they had
in the block. We had a real good pass at it a.nd we had
it acquired excellently and I called off 3 numbers and they
are listed in the l og book, I think there was a 3-1-3 or a
1-3-1.
'Borm.a.n I would be interested to know if I was right on a:ny of
these because you could see the:m. I should have been able
to see the.m. on that one. 1-3-3, I gu.ese it was we called
off. No, 3-1-3 ground observation.
Lovell I had one pass where I saw it and by the time I got to
see the squares or the rectangles we were already by it

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.