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. 72 …The sea condition was very goon ; 2 to ,1. foot waves . We bobbed around, although I…
  • p. 132 …Borman The Red Sea area was one of the clear areas all the t i me…
  • p. 135 …The Suez Canal , the Red Sea, and the coast of Arabia were loud and clear the…
  • p. 136 …Lovell The Red Sea and the Gul f of Eden as it goes into the Arabian…
  • p. 140 …We evaluated them looking at the Cairo area and the Dead Sea, and I see no…
  • p. 146 …About the only area that was consistently clear was the Sahara and the Red Sea a…
  • p. 166 …You could pick out the area of the Salton Sea there even from where we were…
173
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
next night pass, ending at 217 : 17 I counted discrete
flashes of lightening for the entire pass. I collnted
206 discrete occurrances o:" lightning. This was with
the spacecraft level in HORIZON SCAN mode, looking out
one window with no yaw control. Now, we also saw
individual meteors at different times in flight that are
recorded on the tape recorder . But unfortunately we did
not see this great shower that was supposed to come out
of Gemini.
I saw two in a period of about 10 minutes out of Gemini .
They headed below us, of course.
Alright, the meteors. Another significant observation
that we made was a brilliant display of the Aurora. The
Southern Aurora over Australia . And we have some pictures
here.
Sketches .
Sketches of what it looked like, and we will cover this
in the scientific debriefing.
And we measured the time it took for stars to occult to
the air glow layer, and for Venus to go through.
I think this would be best to discuss when we talk to the
scientists.
I think so.
Do you have anything else that was significant? As far

About this file

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.