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.

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:Sor:ma.n Re did a very good job. We knew just what to do. W& had
all the equip,nent with us and everything went very smoothly.
MS0--2 ana,..3 turned out to be not :much of a problem because
at about the seventh dq we turned it on and left it on for
the rest of the flight. The Berigee Adjust :tv1.aneuver 0 Jim
ma.de the ~erigee Aijust Manuever. We did it on stars with
out a platform. I was timing for Jim and I think I fouled
up. We planned to use a perigee to 102 miles, and I think
we wotmd up with about 15 feet per second too much. It
seemed like about 117 miles. One of the reasons that was
causing this was we had come back into the vicinity of the
booster, and just about midwny through the burn the booster
venting that was still occurring suddenly lit up, became
lit up. It looked like we were flying through a lot of
foreign objects or debris. I was afraid that we were going
to hit so.mething. At the same time this trailing wire came
forward and slapped the spacecraft.
Lovell That is where I stopped.
:Sor.man Yes. After we had stopped and it nit us, I looked down
and got confused and said,"No, we haven't burned enough",.
·&> we burned for about five seconds :more. We had a trail
ing primer cord that would flop around and we didn't know
what it was at the time, but it came forward when Jim
stopped burning and flopped on the spacecraft. It ,nade a

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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.