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.
“Cooper”2 pages
174 as operati onal experimental data? Lovell No. Borman We al ready mentioned the fact about the air glow changing with the Moon. Oh, I tell you one thing that is significant and we l ooked for it time and time again. This was the com plete inability to observe stars in daylight. Lovell Oh, yes. Borman I hope we put that one to bed, because we tried and tried and tried. We strained, we squinted, we l ooked at all angles. Lovell Looked at all the angles. Borman Looked at a l l the angles, and we were never once abl e to observe a star in daytime. Now you can observe just at sunrise and just at sunset, but never in the daytime. Lovell When that sun comes up those stars go. Borman That is right. And you get a black horizon--I mean a black sky above a blue horizon. I do not know what the reason for this is, but I will vouch for the fact that you can't see it. Lovell Right.
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.