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.
156 I guess from what I could see of the thing, I think it was a 2-3-4, that was all I had of it. Basicall y , we had a picture from Gr-5. Borman We had pictures from G'11-5 with us in the cockpit to help us acquire it . Lovell We could see the red ground with no strain at all . We knew where to look and it was just difficult to find. Borman You might mention that if they had gone to Yuma , if we had not had to change our l aunch trajectory, it would have been great. You could pick out the area of the Salton Sea there even from where we were, 3 or 4 hundred miles south, it stood out l ike a s ore thumb . Lovell I do think though that for the amount of time that you are over the target, the amount of squares they were expecting you to read are too much. Borman Yes. Lovell Because you just cannot read that much. You have to acquire it, examine it, and then by that time you are going over it. Borman The window measurements. We did this; it was called to do it twice , but we did it three times because of the f act that the tape recorder was shot a.nd they had to get real time ™• They did not get good TM on o.ne pass, so we did it again at an opportune time. Unfortunately, the photometer
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.